244 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

conditions. Such a constructive program, it was shown,
would tend to stabilize and make more uniform the demand
for labor, and would ameliorate the sufferings of temporary
 crises arising from maladjustments between industrial
production and consumption.
From the standpoint of a permanent removal of the
unemployment evil, three plans of procedure, outside of
the internal control of industry, have also in the meantime
been put forward: (1) to develop markets abroad which
would supplement domestic demand by absorbing the surplus
 output of American industry; (2) to increase domestic
demand for industrial products by developing a higher
degree of domestic purchasing power through advancing
the rates of pay of industrial workers, or, in other words,
giving to them a larger share in the productive gains of
industry; and (3) the establishment under the auspices of
the Federal Government of a Board that would collect and
disseminate all forms of information relative to the
stabilization of business and industry, with the understanding
 that the Board itself, on the basis of these data,
would make recommendations as to policy with the
object of preventing dislocations in production and distribution.


This latter proposal is a splendid one, and, if properly
restricted as to form and jurisdiction, is thoroughly practical.
 Some such agency is inevitable in order that information
 may be collected and disseminated for the benefit
of industry and also as a basis of study by disinterested
public representatives charged with formulating policies
for the proper coordination of industrial activities. . Leading
 representatives of industry itself, as will be shown
iE In a theoretically sound but practically impossible form, at present, such a
budgetary board has been advocated in “The Road to Plenty,” by William T.
Foster and Waddill Catchings; publications of Pollak Foundation, Boston, 1928;
also in an article in the Century Magazine, July, 1928, by the same authors,
entitled “Progress and Plenty.”