Page:The Economics of Unemployment.djvu/16

For some time past the industrial world has presented a strange spectacle of idleness and impotence. Farms, mines, factories and workshops in large numbers stand idle or half working in most countries, while huge stocks of food, fuel, raw materials and finished goods lie rotting in storehouses and docks, waiting for the ships, that are lying up, to carry them to the places where they can be used to feed the idle machinery of production and supply the needs of impoverished and starving populations. All the materials and human instruments of production are present in abundance, nay in excess. But their normal collaboration is impossible, because they cannot market the goods they could produce, so as to cover even the barest costs of the production.

There does not appear to be enough world-market to take all or nearly all that can be produced, if the whole of the available productive power were used. And this applies not to this or that kind of goods but to goods in general. The most striking testi-