6  2

TUE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  UNEMPLOYED

not  increase  at  the  same  rate  as  formerly  ;  that  our
capacity  for  production  is  consequently  in  excess  of  our
requirements,  and  could  be  considerably  increased  at  short
notice;  that  this  is  due  partly  to  the  competition  of  the
large  amount  of  capital  which  is  being  steadily  accumulated
in  the  country.”  The  Minority  Report  finds  the  gist  of
trade  depressions  in  “a  long-continued  fall  of  prices—in
many  cases  the  result  either  of  actual  over-production  or
of  a  capacity  of  production  in  excess  of  the  demand.”
This  Commission  entirely  throws  over  the  notion,  which
every  man  of  wide  business  experience  has  long  repudiated,
that  an  excess  of  producing-power  in  some  trades  must
be  balanced  by  a  deficiency  in  others,  and  that  there  can  be
no  general  excess.  The  idea  that  depressed  trade  means
a  mis-application  of  capital  and  labour  as  between  trade
and  trade  is  entirely  rejected  by  both  bodies  of  Commissioners, ­
  who  find  the  malady  they  are  investigating  common
to  all  “productive  industries.”  The  Minority  expressly
asserts  over-production,  in  the  sense  above  taken,  as  the
chief  agent  in  depression  :
“  Over-production,  by  which  we  understand  the  production ­
  of  commodities  (or  existence  of  the  agencies  of
production)  in  excess,  not  of  the  capacity  of  consumption,
if  their  distribution  were  gratuitous,  but  of  the  demand
for  export  at  remunerative  prices,  and  of  the  amount  of
income  or  earnings  available  for  their  purchase  in  the
home  market—that  is,  of  profitable  employment  for  the
people.  The  depression  under  which  we  have  so  long
been  suffering  is  undoubtedly  of  this  nature.”
The  Majority,  though  rejecting  the  general  term  “  overproduction,” ­
  admit,  as  we  saw,  the  phenomena.