Page:The humanizing of commerce and industry, the Joseph Fisher lecture in commerce, delivered in Adelaide, 9th May, 1919.pdf/12

 of 2,200,000 organized? How are the recruits for each occupation obtained? We are told that it is done by the law of supply and demand. Take any average Australian boy. How is his future avocation determined? Not by the general law of supply and demand, but largely by the law of supply and demand in his own home. In other words, the financial circumstances of his own home determine largely at what he is to work. If his parents are poor, he must get work at the best paying job available. Many parents have for long years stinted themselves in order that their children may get a skilled training of some kind, thus securing a better chance in life than their parents had. If the parents are better off they endeavour to find out their boy's natural bent, and to place him in some occupation he specially fancies. But they have nothing to guide them in making a decision. If they decide to make their boy an electrical engineer they do not know whether there is likely to be a shortage or a surplus of electrical engineers. Similarly there is no guide as to whether the community will want carpenters, or fitters, or bricklayers, or other skilled tradesmen. It is all just a blind choice, dictated by fancy, necessity, or accident. This is one of the contributing causes of the community finding itself every now and then with a number of unemployed in its midst. Nobody bothers to get out statistics indicating the industrial position and prospects, to guide parents in choosing occupations for their boys and girls. It is all just haphazard.

When we turn to the actual production of goods, we find just the same lack of organization and direction. Each man who goes on the land pleases himself what he grows. He comes into town, asks agents or other farmers how they reckon the markets are going, and on their inexact opinion decides what to sow. If when his crop is harvested there is no market for his products, we remark what a fool he was to grow that stuff. We forget that in forcing that farmer to decide for himself on insufficient knowledge, we are unfair. His loss entails hardship on his wife and family and loss to the community, which has thus grown a product for which it can find no use. Yet the community has a very direct interest in seeing that no productive effort like this is wasted. Other men drop wheat growing and go in for sheep, or vice versa, simply because they think the new occupation will be more profitable. If a man loses, who cares? It is the law of supply and demand. If he can catch