Suchergebnisse

It is a sophistry to which human nature commonly resorts, when one wants to perform an act and at the same time to avoid its necessary consequences, to give it a fresh name. Thus, if people wish to live in concubinage and yet to be received in decent society, they call it "companionate marriage," and if statesmen wish to rule and exploit a country without conferring on its inhabitants the grand privileges of citizenship, they call the annexation "protection"; whilst if they desire to impose tariffs on trade, and at the same time to avoid the connotation of scarcity and dearness, they avoid the awkward word "protection," and style the process "safeguarding."

In his autobiography, Cheerful Yesterdays, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, looking back on the long crusade that ended with the abolition of Negro bondage in the United States, declared: "The anti-slavery movement was not strongest in the educated classes, but was primarily a people's movement, based on the simplest human instincts and far stronger … in the factories and shoe-shops than in the pulpits and colleges." Few people have challenged this statement, which Higginson made in 1898; probably because the scarcity of material on the subject has prevented a thorough examination of all its implications, and especially of the main argument that the laboring man was the real force behind the antislavery crusade.Yet there is sufficient evidence to throw serious doubt upon the accuracy of Higginson's statement, evidence which reveals that workers in shops and factories often exhibited an almost callous unconcern for the entire crusade.

Regardless of the institutional or political structure of the countries engaged in modem warfare, competition for manpower among the armed forces, agriculture and industries creates labor shortage problems which, of necessity, must be solved by similar methods as long as the total amount of human resources is limited. A cursory glance at the wartime labor legislation of Great Britain, Canada, the U.S.S.R., and Germany shows that the means of coping with the steadily increasing labor shortage are on the whole similar in all four countries. Recent developments in the field of manpower allocation and wage freezing in the United States, while they have not nearly reached the extent of the European countries, presage the introduction of labor control measures the character of which can be best envisaged by reviewing the principal features of major legislative enactments designed to overcome increasing labor scarcity during the past three and one-half years in these four countries. [On the same page where the comment begins is an announcement of the wartime death of former student Carl R. Heussy.]

The political groups in the Kizoku-in, or House of Peers, are of more importance than the scant attention paid them by both native and foreign students of Japanese government implies. In fact, one of the six groups habitually controls the House, which, in turn, is one of the strongest national second chambers existing today. As a result, the Kenkyū-kai, or Study Association, commands steady, the other groups intermittent, patronage in the form of appointments to cabinet or sub-cabinet positions and concessions to their legislative wishes. The political groups in the House of Peers became a concern of Japanese statesmen shortly after the organization of the Diet in 1890; they are today debated in relation to the proposals for legislative reform which have been repeatedly urged since 1932. Although but minor wheels in the mechanism, some knowledge of their place and function is essential to an adequate understanding of the operation of the complicated Japanese political machine.The history, organization, and influence of these groups is not easy to determine; the scarcity of reliable sources, even in Japanese, makes doubly confusing the large number of diverse yet meaningless group titles which have been employed since 1890.

At the outbreak of war in August, 1914, plans to cope with a possible food scarcity in the Allied countries were of a rudimentary character. For example, in the War Book of the British Government, there was only one measure dealing directly with food, and that a measure for obtaining information. In France the only legislation on agriculture or foodstuffs existing at the outbreak of war was a law of the period of the Revolution, dating back to July, 1791, which authorized the fixing of retail prices for bread and meat. Hence, methods of procedure had to be improvised as difficulties arose and it was not until well on towards the close of hostilities that anything like a comprehensive food policy had been devised.As the central foodstuff in the diet of the peoples of the western Allied powers, bread came to play a leading role in the development of food policy. In the words of the body that was later to dominate world import trade in wheat, bread was "the only diet which sufficed in isolation and was therefore, indispensable." Other foods might fail or be in short supply, but starvation seemed a long way off so long as there was enough bread. In the United Kingdom an implicit "breadstuffs policy" underlay the whole structure of food policy. Though never expressed in any one document, that policy has been stated in these words: whatever else was allowed to be in short supply, whether for human or for animal consumption, there should be a sufficiency of breadstuffs to meet in full all demands for them without rationing. In the other European Allied countries the direction of policy is not so clear but, with surprising unanimity, efforts were directed to keeping bread cheap and plentiful.

Previous post-war experience is so uniform, and economists differ so little in their prognoses for the next post-war period, that it seems safe to be somewhat dogmatic about the situation that post-war tax policy must meet. In the absence of measures specifically designed to prevent it, there is every reason to expect the typical post-war pattern of hesitation, inflation, deflation, boom, and prolonged depression. It is clear that the unprecedented magnitude of the war effort could lead to fluctuations of unprecedented violence. If the Japanese war were to end soon after the European war, or if it were on a much smaller scale, it is conceivable that the uncertainty characteristic of the months just after cessation of hostilities might lead directly to deep depression. During the reconversion period, there is bound to be serious unemployment in certain industries and regions, that could start a cumulative downswing if allowed to produce a commensurate drop in national income. If on the other hand the Japanese campaign lasts several months and is on a comparable but nevertheless smaller scale, the "hesitation" period may be completely ironed out.In the first year or two after the European armistice, and perhaps even for a similar period after the Japanese armistice, the primary economic problem will still be scarcity of consumers' goods relative to potential demand for them. The money supply has already risen over 70 per cent since war began, and with $1.75 billion of war bonds in the hands of individuals and another $1.5 billion in the hands of non-financial corporations even before the fifth war loan, it could rise another 70 per cent through sale of government securities to the banking system if war ended tomorrow.