THESE FACTS DISREGARDED.
As a consequence of the four years of war, the direct financial losses suffered, and the losses suffered through disorganization of our manufacturing activities, this balance, which had been so overwhelmingly on our side before 1914, was rudely disturbed, and it might have been thought that -if one -thing was clearer than another it was that we had such great arrears to make up in the matter of exports of our goods and services that the supreme necessity was to work harder, spend less (especially on imported articles) and produce cheaply if we were to recover the years which the locusts had eaten. Economy both in national and private expendi- ture, it might have been thought, would be the watch- word of the hour, and that as regards industry attention would be given to supply the lack of efficient workmen occasioned by the casualties of the War. Both as regards public and private expenditure, however, con- ditions the very reverse of these requirements charac- terized almost every year of the post-War period, while it would be hard to say whether the capitalist indus- trialist, in his unreadiness to recognize the requirements of the situation rendered necessary by the new conditions, or the short-sightedness of Trade Unions and labour leaders in their demands for a rigid wage with hampering restrictions in conditions and hours of working,was the more responsible for the manner in which industry has been handicapped in facing the requirements of the post-War period.
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