Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/87

Rh We may overlook some contradictory and paradoxical things in Mr. Hoover’s expression such as the declaration about there being a vastly improved scale of living on the one hand and the declaration about there being a deficit in our housing and transportation facilities on the other hand; also the paradox about a general state of national prosperity which a large part of the people are obviously not enjoying. We may avoid any controversy upon those subjects and confine our attention to the positive declaration that while in recent economic history the American population has increased about 15 per cent the increase in productivity has been from 25-30 per cent, which if true would indeed spell an increase in the scale of living by the people, that might be expressed by the acquisition of more comforts or release from the exigency of having to work so hard, or both. I hesitate even to attempt to contradict Mr. Hoover upon those points, for there is in his statement a certain vagueness respecting the period of time that he had in mind. He refers to normality being in 1923 “a vastly higher and more comfortable standard than in 1913” and to “an unparalleled growth in our industrial and commercial efficiency” in the last decade, but further on he refers to studies of production “over average periods of 10 years apart, before and since the war.”

As between 1901 and 1916 there will be no question respecting the validity of Mr. Hoover's assertions; nor, probably, as between 1901 and 1921. As between 1913 and the present time or between 1916 and the present time, there can not be the same assent, and for the reason that between the middle of 1914 and the end of 1918 there happened to the world some things—