Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/69

 speeches generally produced a sense of relief in the House of Commons and among the income tax paying class because he had not made a greater addition than he did to the income tax; and it may surely be argued that in war time it is not the business of a Chancellor to produce a sense of relief but to brace the taxpayers to an effort which might at least be a faint reflection of what the fighting men were doing for them at the front.

It may be that the taxpayer would have jibbed and kicked if Mr. McKenna, who at least set a sound standard of aiming each year at covering out of taxation the service of the anticipated addition to debt, had tried to do more. The view has been expressed by experienced tax-gatherers that the great industrial effort which was certainly made by our people was only possible because the wage earners were stimulated by high wages and the organizers by big profits. But as everyone now knows industrial unrest was almost chronic in the later years of the war, partly because the wage earners believed that their high wages were fully offset by high prices and partly because they knew that their employers were making enormous profits, as shown by the passage quoted above.