Page:The Economics of Unemployment.djvu/138

product is such as to evoke increased consumption. All these credit schemes turn in the last resort on this condition.

The special character given to the present cyclical depression by the destructiveness of war must not be allowed to conceal its fundamental economic nature and to furnish support to false remedies. The material destruction of the War was not so great but that it could by this time have been completely repaired, had a good peace been made without delay, accompanied by a vigorous international policy for dealing with the temporary dislocations of trade, transport and finance. The failure to do this is responsible for the special character and intensity of this depression, and has brought the world-economic system into so feeble a functioning as to keep current production so low that the margin of current saving is reduced to a minimum. I wish to make it quite clear that my general charge of oversaving as the root-cause of fluctuations and depressions is quite consistent with the admission that during a deep depression there is under-saving in the sense of a rate and proportion of saving to spending inadequate to the normal needs of a progressive industry. It is often said at such a time as this that there is a shortage of capital. This, however, is not strictly true. Taking the structure of industry as a whole, it is demonstratively false, for almost all forms of capital exist in apparent superabundance. There are, however, now, as at all times, certain new industries or other developmental work which might function if cheap abundant new capital were available. Such capital is not