My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleybetter. As science increases the means to produce with mass production methods forthis immense market it will more than ever be necessary to equate production andconsumption by systematically and evenly increasing wages, salaries and fair profit toprovide the market which industry will otherwise lack; and this can only be done bythe economic leadership of a central authority within an economy largely insulatedfrom the world costing system and the fluctuations of external market prices. It willnot be enough to have a common market, it will also be necessary to haveorganisation within it if production for adequate demand and a fair basis forcompetition is to be secured. Everything necessary can be done by the instrument ofthe wage-price mechanism, and the action of government can virtually be limited tothese two points. Even control of prices will only be necessary if monopoly exploitsits position; otherwise, in a viable economic community prices can be left to the freeplay of competition.The flexible instrument of the wage-price mechanism can secure many objectiveswhich are becoming essential. Not only can it systematically equate production andconsumption and thus overcome the basic dilemma of the thirties, which threatens toreturn directly war and near-war conditions and other abnormalities of the presentperiod cease. It can also maintain a proper balance between wage, salary, profit andinvestment, for if you have power to influence the two former factors youautomatically affect the two latter. Within this equilibrium it can secure someredistribution of reward, which is vital if modern society is not to be increasinglydivorced from every dynamic principle of industrial development.The brain-drain menaces the well-being of Britain today and of Europe tomorrow, andif proper incentive is not restored to ability the drain may be followed by somethinglike a stop of supply. It is against every principle by which the industrial revolution ofthe West has reached its present point of phenomenal development, and against everyprinciple by which man has scaled the heights of evolutionary nature, that high rewardshould not go to high ability and energy. Yet society is becoming so arranged that thedifferential award between much skill and little skill is tending more and more todisappear. The reason is that power rests with the massed battalions in the industrialdog-fight by which wage questions are settled, and in that struggle all factors seem tobe considered except the maintenance and promotion of exceptional ability. Nothingcan remedy this condition, which drifts ever more clearly toward disaster, except thedirect intervention of government in determining the basic principles of reward foreffort.Not only outstanding ability, not only the scientists and gifted technicians whoseattraction and maintenance should be the first charge on any economic community,are drowning in the present industrial chaos. Any body of men is neglected, howeveressential, unless they are organised in a big battalion to prevail in the industrialstruggle. A mass of the lowest-paid workers for no good reason draw a wage far lowerthan the main body of their fellow workers, and despite continual discussion of theproblem the trade unions have so far failed to do anything about it. It is the top andthe bottom of the scale that suffer most.Agriculture has never yet secured recognition of its basic importance to a healthycommunity, and it never will be properly treated until the principle of economicleadership by government through the wage-price mechanism is firmly established.411 of 424