"And don’t you think it wonderful (asked
the Guide who was showing us over a great
factory) that the mind of man could have
Invented this?”    The Guide, whose duty it
Was to impress upon all visitors the size and
importance of the factory he was explaining,
made a magnificent gesture towards Q& great
complicated machine which meant nothing
to us. “That,” he said, “is one of the greatest
achievements of mankind. It can produce
goods on a scale unthinkable before. It is
almost human; in fact, it is much more
than human.”

"That means to say, I suppose,” put in the
sallow faced man standing by, “that this
machine can do the work of many men? It
can do as much work in an hour as such
and such a number of men would take a
day, or a week, to do before?”

“That is so,” said the Guide. “‘Three men
can look after this machine, and in an hour
it can do as much as sixty men did in a day
before it was invented.”

“And so you increase the numbers of men
who are unemployed by decreasing the num-
ber of men who are employable?”  asked the
sallow man with a faint smile.

“Well, I’m afraid we do for the time be-
ing.” answered the Guide.    “But remember
what happened last century.    The more
machines the more work all round there was
and eventually there were more men at work
in the land than had ever worked in one land
before.”’

“And that,”  asked the sallow visitor,  “was
because of the machines?”

“Entirely,” replied the Guide.   “And we
hope it will be so again.”

“But I thought,” proceeded the sallow
visitor,    ‘‘I thought there were more people
employed because there were many more
people to employ and even more because
there were many millions more people to
make goods for.    And I thought, too, that
England was prosperous then because the  
country was then the workshop of the world.  
Other countries had not begun to use
machines to a like extent and therefore
England manufactured goods for almost the
whole civilized and uncivilized world.”

“That was so, I believe,’ answered the
Guide.   “And even now, I am told, we (that
is England) are producing more goods than
ever although the numbers of men out of
work have increased.   Isn’t that eloquent
testimony to the greatness of our machines?”

“I should rather say,” said the sallow
man,  “that that was testimony to our own
stupidity.    For although, as you say, there
are more goods being produced by your won-
derful machines, are there not fewer people
capable of buying the increased goods your
machines can produce?    And what is the
good of producing goods which people can-
not buy?”

How We “Score.”

“You seem to forget,” said the Guide,
“that there are the foreign markets in which
we can sell our goods even if we cannot sell
at home.”

“So,” said the S.M.,  “what we do is to
manufacture goods to sell in other countries,
and drive other countries’ workmen out of
employment,  and lessen the numbers of men
and women employed at home by the in-
creasing introduction of machinery to replace
human labour.”

“But.” said the Guide.   ”other countries
should invent machinery better than ours to
do the work.   They have the chance,  only
they haven't the brains to do it.   So we
score.

“I fear I cannot grasp that argument of
yours,”  said the S.M.  “It seems to me that
the only person who scores is the inventor,
whose brain is able to displace,  by the result
of its labours,  hundreds of skilled workmen.”

“There you are wrong,”  said the Guide.
“The inventor was practically a poor man.
He was paid a few hundred pounds for his
invention,  because the great firms were afraid
he might get someone to help him to start
a new factory and beat them all into a cocked
hat.   The industry, and not the inventor,
has ‘scored,’  as you say.”

“And I suppose you recognise the skilled
workmen as being part of the industry?”
asked the S.M.

“We do,” put in the Guide.

“Then,”  said the S.M.   “they must think
that they have ‘scored’ when a machine
which one of their fellows has invented has
driven them out of the factory on to the
roads and street-corners ... ”

“Or rather, in this merciful country, on to
the Labour Exchanges,”  said the Guide.

“And do you think these men will ever find
jobs again in their own industry?”  asked
the S.M.

“Oh, yes,  they must find them again,  when
we have found new markets for our goods.”

" And those markers will presumably be
among the dark-skinned peoples of Africa
and the yellow-skinned people of China and
the brown people of the Pacific Islands....
presumably,”  said the S.M.,   "which means
unless other manufacturing countries can
get in first or drive us out of them with
cheaper and better goods when once we are
there?”

Faith in the Future.

  “You do not seem very convinced that
there is any future for foreign trade as be-
tween this country and other countries,”   said
the Guide.   “Let me tell you that unless we
thought there was a very big future for
foreign trade we should hardly have installed
this wonderful machine.    In fact, unless
trade revives and we can work the machine
all the time,  it will be little less than a dead
loss which we shall have incurred as the
result of our great faith in the future.”

“And thus,  I suppose,  it is necessary that
we should keep up our fighting forces at full 
strength—because we shall either have to
capture by force or hold with force those
foreign markets you value so highly,”  said
the S.M.

“Oh no,” exclaimed the Guide,  “we shall
persuade foreign peoples peaceably that our
goods are the best.   We shall do it on the
merits of our goods.  Once we do that we shall
regain our former position as the principal
commercial nation of the world.   And we are
on the way towards doing it,”’   he proclaimed.

“But do you seriously think you can per-
suade other nations that the goods you make
are better than exactly the same class of
goods that they make?”   enquired the sallow,
simple man.

“Of course.   They've only got to compare
our goods with their own to see the superior-
ity of the goods we produce,”    said the Guide
in a burst of confidence.

“I’m afraid you’re too much of a com-
mercial idealist—if that isn’t a contradiction
in terms—for these days of passionate
nationalisms,”   said the S.M.   “When each  
nation thinks itself self-sufficient politically
and economically—in spite of the growing
world-unity imposed by science and art—how
can you hope to make much headway with
your commercial ideal?”

The Guide ignored,  or did not see,  the
sarcasm of the  S.M.’s last question and went
on patiently to explain how the world is knit
together by trade.

“Yet if it is knit together,” asked the
SM.   “how is it that nearly every nation,
our own included now,  has erected a high
tariff wall around itself to keep out the goods
of other countries,  or make them pay for the
privilege of selling here,  while allowing per-
fectly free exit for goods made here?     Can it
be that each protected country believes it
can sell goods to other countries without buy-
ing from them?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then if it wishes to trade with its im-
mediate neighbours to whom,  according to
yourself,  it is knit,  why should it protect
itself from them as though they were doing
it an injury?” asked the S.M.

But the Guide had had enough questioning.
He was growing weary of this catechising.   So
he politely told the S.M. that he felt no fur-
ther good would come by continuing the dis-
cussion and that he had other visitors to
show around the factory.   With a courteous
bow, which the simple minded sallow man
did not know whether it was intended for
himself or as a genuflexion to the great
machine, the Guide bade his adieu.

H.J.W.