CONSTRUCTIVE REMEDIES NEEDED 255

Mr. Javits’ proposal for an Institute of Industrial Coordination
 seems to me to be a step in the right direction.
Bad times and unemployment are largely preventable.
They are natural results of the incredible waste that still
exists in production and distribution, which in turn is due to
faulty economic and business thinking.
Prosperity comes when the masses have adequate buying
power. A country may have great wealth—that is to say
capital—and still fail to be prosperous if large numbers are
without sufficient buying power to be able to buy enough to
keep all employed. . . .
As a result of the increased production per man it has been
possible to increase their wages and salaries and also to
reduce the selling prices of what they make to such a degree
that the masses could buy these products freely. This process
was helped by the fact that in order to supply these successful
industries with needed materials, machinery, equipment and
parts, still greater numbers of people were employed at wages
that were higher than before.
But now serious unemployment has developed. Various explanations
 for this unemployment are offered—mostly wrong
ones. It is often said that unemployment is caused by the
new scientific mass production and mass distribution. The
truth seems to be, that to an important degree, it is due to
the fact that there is not enough mass production and mass
distribution. . . .
Employment for everyone is coming because it is clear that
scientific mass production can not live unless the masses can
buy freely the goods so produced. It is obvious -that the
masses must be fully employed in order that any industry
shall flourish permanently.
This necessary organization may well take the general
shape of an Institute of Industrial Coordination, altho it may
be necessary to change the details more or less. I believe that
nothing would so definitely and so rapidly stabilize a real general
 prosperity for our country as the immediate adoption and