CONSTRUCTIVE REMEDIES NEEDED 243

full speed ahead, if production was not accurately coordinated
 with consumption, or if supplementary industries
were not developed to absorb the workers displaced by
increased mechanization or by temporary or permanent
retardation of the older undertakings, the price of the
new industrial benefits would be recurring periods of
anemployment and suffering for great numbers of wageearners.
 Along with this development might also go a
decline in margins of profits for the industries which were
adversely affected by a contraction in the demand for their
utput.
Certain palliative measures for the relief of temporary
unemployment conditions were obvious and had been advocated
 for many years. The really serious problem, however,
 developed by the new industrial revolution required
measures and methods to be devised for removing permanently
 the overhanging menace of widespread unemployment,
 with all its attendant human suffering and social
and industrial losses.

CoNSTRUCTIVE MEASURES PROPOSED

In the face of such deplorable unemployment conditions
as prevailed in the winter of 1927-1928, the immediate
proposals for relief naturally centered around the possibility
 of developing new sources of work for those affected.
The inauguration of new public works and projects of all
<inds was advocated. As a more permanent policy it was
also urged that the local, state, and national governments
should appropriate and hold in reserve plans of and funds
for public works to be released when industrial conditions
became subnormal and private employment slack. Indusry
 itself, it was also pointed out, should, as far as possible,
accumulate reserves and withhold projects for new buildings
 and other improvements to be used at a time of similar