"THE COMING REVOLUTION."
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPED:LIMO] SLR,—I thank you for the characteristic fairness with which you printed my letter. I must not presume on your hospitality to return to the charge at equal length, but since your reviewer persists in his untrue and injurious statement that I have cast an " unwarranted slur " upon my profession, I must ask you to print the actual words from which he gives mis- leading extracts. I do refer to the "perversions of the Press "—perversions which do exist, and to some of which you yourself have drawn attention; but I expressly add :—
" Being a working journalist myself, and having many of my best friends among working journalists on papers of all political complexions, I am little likely to join in the general denunciation of `the corrupt Press' if that charge is meant as a condemnation of journalists' morality. if it were legiti- mate to generalize about classes, I should hazard the generaliza- tion that journalists, even in the pursuit of their profession, are more truthful and honourable than, say, business men or clergymen. But the point is that, within the present system, honesty is for most people an economic impossibility. . . . Moreover, even at present, there are, within my own knowledge and experience, some papers whose policy le unaffected by any financial consideration or control whatever."
On every other point I could, given space, disprove your reviewer's assertions. I confine myself to one typical one. I calculate in my chapter "Enough for All" that a distribution of the national income would give £10 a week per family. Your reviewer, apparently not having read to the end of that chapter, said that I made it £8. I contradicted this, but he returns to the charge with a quotation from p. 187 which does give the .28 a week figure; but that is based, quite ex- plicitly, from the start of the chapter, and merely for the eake of convenience in calculation, on the wrong assumption that money is still at the same value as in 1918. I go on immediately to point out this defect in the calculation, and on the very next page make the categorical statement :—
" .R.400 a year per family, calculated on the 1918 basis, should, on the present basis, be well over £500."
Nor is this all. In the preceding chapter, with a cross-refer- ence to the chapter just quoted, I state emphatically in italics:— "£10 a family is roughly what would be given by an equal distribution of present production."
Your reviewer, instead of frankly admitting his error, now says that I make a " vague prediction" that every family "might" have £500 a year in circumstances which my book does not even discuss. There is nothing vague or contingent about my statement at all. It is obviously impossible for me, hampered by a desire to play fair, to compete in a controversy conducted by these methods.—I am, Sir, ese., GERALD GOULD, Associate Editor.
The Daily Herald, Ltd., 2 Carmelite Street, B.C. d.
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