is their own and not the Government's. Indeed, the modern publicist is inclined to make the Government responsible for all unemployment and so constrain it into a vicious circle which makes economies almost impossible. And yet these difficulties must be faced; and they can be overcome, by patience, by knowledge of the requirements of the body politic, by sympathetic consideration for those who have to suffer.

A good many years ago a British colony seemed to be on the verge of bankruptcy. The order went out from Downing Street that it must be saved from such a fate and without recourse to the Treasury. The administrator had been trained in a hard service and he faced the disagreeable job. It meant cutting down; it meant dispensing with services; it meant complaints and misunderstandings. Yet he persevered and within three years or so he had not only restored financial equilibrium but set the island on the path to prosperity. We will hope that he got his reward: but the hard discipline which he had to apply did not make him popular. And there comes back a scene in a different place—a discussion as to the urgent need for economy in a self-governing colony--a former minister rising and asking who would beginbecause some years ago when he had been in power and proceeded to cut down redundant offices and make savings which affected the voters the only result was his early fall from power.

Truly the task of retrenchment is a hard one and thankless; and the best of ministries may shrink from it if they are not supported by acts of renunciation on the part of the whole community. For the public service did not of itself embark upon a course of unnecessary extravagance; it was led into it by the business man,and the latter reflected the mind of the nation. As already suggested, we are even now suffering from the reaction of 1918-19, when the desire to get and the desire to spend outran every other mental activity; when the unselfishness promised in the stress of war was thrown to the winds; when those who had suffered and saved England were thrust aside by those who had made money of their sacrifice. This orgy of extravagance is still the curse of the populace. Everyone must career about in motorcars, spend the week-ends from home, dine at expensive hotels. Men and women rush into rivalry with their neighbours, careless whether they can afford it or not. As a great lady put it recently: "The world seems to be living on bank overdrafts." And this

parade of luxury is rampant in the face of many whose health and fortunes were destroyed by the very factors which have made the luxury possible. It is at the bottom of all the ill-feeling which from time to time shows itself in the national life.

That there should be violent contrasts between the luxury of idleness and the penury of those who are daily overworked is a serious blot (almost a plague-spot) on our civilisation. The conflict of interest between endowed idleness and the inadequate payment for services rendered is wholly bad; and it becomes ten times worse in a time of intense national anxiety. This is not a question as between capital and labour; those who endeavour so to assign it are either cross-eyed or wrong-headed. It is not the corduroy trousers which suffer most, but the "black coat with the white seams."* To pursue this thought, however, would be irrelevant to the present purpose. What we are now concerned with is to insist that public economy must be based on the conviction of the necessity of private economy; that it is the first duty of every individual to keep down his expenditure to the minimum; that just as in war-time a real effort was made to curtail personal luxuries, so now in the financial distress of the nation any expenditure exceeding a moderate standard of comfort should be regarded as unfair to others. The old catchword, “all good for trade," will certainly not in times of grievous distress bear analysis. Ostentatious and costly expenditure does more harm than it can possibly do good. Until the nation learns this lesson and practises itself what it demands from its rulers, the task of enforcing effective economy in the public service will remain most difficult.

Yet the Government cannot afford to await a lead from the people; it has sufficient support amongst the more enlightened and is bound to set an example. The Conservative member for Chippenham, Captain Cazalet, before Parliament rose, gave the present Government a very strong hint, which was reported as follows with a notable comment in the Morning Post of August 6, 1925:

An example might be set by Cabinet Ministers consenting to a voluntary reduction of salaries; the sentiment was applauded by members who

*See a striking article by Miss Kingston in the Spectator of April 18, 1925.

were not Cabinet Ministers, but the cheers died away when members of parliament were invited to subscribe to the same self-denying ordinance.

There is one category of expenditure on which, especially when concerned with public utilities, some separate comment will doubtless be demanded, viz., expenditure which may be expected to bring a definite return. Thus it was that the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, twenty-five years ago, called for expenditure on our undeveloped estates." The Development Commission was a result of the same idea. So was the Oversea Settlement Commission, absorbing and extending every previous effort in regulating migration. And quite recently attention has been drawn to certain posthumous fragments of the late Lord Milner,* who speaks of

.. the tendency to confound true economy-the repression of such extravagance-with the false economy which consists in starving necessary public services or cutting off reproductive expenditure. . . and then goes on to assert that the policy of bold economic expansion as a cure for the damage done by war is only sure of success in a new country with great undeveloped resources. This view, however, he qualifies by the statement that " the discoveries of science are economically tantamount to the opening-up of a new continent "—so he does not exclude the United Kingdom.

It is not otherwise than good that the sternest critic of expenditure should be made to pause and consider. The modern theory of profitable trade, its insistence on the big advertising campaign, the big building, open-handed expenditure, is specious. In the United States, its home, it seems to be successful. There is a temptation to transfer its methods to the undertakings of the government. But looked at quite squarely, is the theory sound? The consumer in the end must pay for all the advertising, all the big rents, all the fair ladies who nowadays adorn the show-rooms. Is he not paying too much? And does not the excess so paid diminish funds which might be available for a larger output of soberer work? Is it at all clear that government expenditure on the Development Commission or on Oversea Settlement shows any adequate return? If some of us are apt to be over-cautious, we have every justification just at present in the general financial

*A fragment dated July 25, 1923. See The Times, July 29, 1925.

position of the nation; the man who is heavily in debt should hesitate long before he incurs further obligations in the hope of building up a good business. His Majesty's Government should remember that the best basis for development is sound economy in details. Most large fortunes have been built up on scrupulous attention to small matters. Many prosperous communities are examples of unremitting care in little things. A thorough overhauling of the national expenditure rightly precedes the most attractive schemes of development.

What we all desire is a nation self-respecting and free—a nation where liberty assures the healthy development of each individual; on the one hand, eliminating the selfishness of the over-rich, on the other restraining the impatience of those who would raise the less fortunate at the expense of everyone else. To this end leads economy-economy in our private expenses, economy in public undertakings, economy in every detail of public and local expenditure. Let us falsify the fear genuinely expressed only a few weeks back by a man of world-wide experience and much ability: "There is no hope of economy under a democracy." We doubtless need patience: the great inequalities of the existing social system cannot be removed at a blow. There is no gain in substituting for them another worse set of inequalities, as some extremists appear to desire. Yet we look forward to a time not distant when all will be working heart and soul for the ideal. For this the nation needs resource-capacity to see the factors which make for the ideal State and to utilise each to the full. And it needs economy above all, because it is the foundation of prosperity and no delays need retard its operation. Patience, resource, economy :-and the greatest of these is economy.

C. ALEXANDER HARRIS

VOL 242. NO. 494.

ELECTRICITY AND COAL CONSUMPTION

"HE heavy monetary indebtedness of this country arising out of the war, and the demand, in many essential respects justified, for a higher standard of living in the wage-earning classes, are making an insistent call for increased productivity, if we are to retain solvency and social stability. The call can only be met by increased human effort and the making of that effort more effective by an improved utilisation of the potential wealth embodied in our natural resources. It was the comparatively early use we made of one of our mineral deposits, namely coal, particularly for the generation of power, which gave us industrial pre-eminence, but we have now no sort of monopoly in this respect and the day of cheap coal has probably gone. We are still a great coal-producing country, but we can only reap the full benefit of this endowment of stored solar energy by attaining and maintaining a high order of efficiency in its extraction and utilisation. Other means for the generation of heat, power, and light are for us of comparatively little importance, and nothing to take the place of coal is even faintly adumbrated by any discovery of modern science. It represents, moreover, a chemical storehouse or labyrinth of great value and extent, the contents of which can be preserved or destroyed according to the kind of handling to which they are subjected.

It was, no doubt, with such considerations in mind that a Coal Conservation Committee was appointed in 1916, "to consider what improvements can be effected in the present method of mining and using coal." Unfortunately, in that time of stress, the review of the subject which could be effected was of a very incomplete character. It is true that the complexity of the problem was apparently visualised at the beginning, as evidenced by the appointment of four sub-committees to deal with different aspects of it, but in the final report issued in 1918 the wider vision had gone. It was only the proposals of the Power Generation and Transmission Sub-Committee which were explained at length and made the basis of the committee's recommendations. The report of that sub-committee was substantially the statement of a