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Notes on Sources
effective weapons of destruction"
(Socialism, 1927, p. 484;
Nationalokonomie,
1940, p. 720). Walter Lippmann in his
Good Society (1937) tried to dissociate him-
self from Spencer, but only to invoke Mises. He and Lippmann mirrored liberal
reaction to the new protectionism of the 1920s and 1930s. Undoubtedly, many fea-
tures of the situation now recalled Speenhamland. In Austria unemployment
benefit was being subsidized by a bankrupt Treasury; in Great Britain "extended
unemployment benefit" was indistinguishable from the "dole"; in America WPA
and PWA had been launched; actually Sir Alfred Mond, head of Imperial Chemi-
cal Industries, vainly advocated in 1926 that British employers should receive
grants from the unemployment fund in order to "make u p " wages and thus help
to increase employment. On the unemployment issue as on the currency issue,
liberal capitalism in its death throes was faced with the still unsolved problems
bequeathed to it by its beginnings.
9. Poor Law and the Organization of Labor
No inquiry has yet been made into the wider implications of the Speenham-
land system, its origins, its effects and the reasons of its abrupt discontinuance.
Here are a few of the points involved.
1. To what extent was Speenhamland a war measure?
From the strictly economic point of view, Speenhamland can not truly be said
to have been a war measure, as has often been asserted. Contemporaries hardly
connected the wages position with the war emergency. In so far as there was a no-
ticeable rise in wages,
the movementhad startedbefore the war. Arthur Young's
Cir-
cular Letter of 1795, designed to ascertain the effects of the failure of crops on the
price of corn contained (point IV) this question: "What has been the rise (if any)
in the pay of the agricultural labourers, on comparison with the preceding pe-
riod?" Characteristically, his correspondents failed to attach any definite meaning
to the phrase "preceding period." References ranged from three to fifty years. They
included the following stretches of time:
3 years J. Boys, p. 97.
3-4 years J. Boys, p. 90.
10 years Reports from Shropshire, Middlesex, Cambridgeshire.
10-15 years Sussex and Hampshire.
10-15 years E. Harris.
20 years J. Boys, p. 86.
30-40 years William Pitt.
50 years Rev. J. Howlett.
No one set the period at two years, the term of the French War, which had
started in February 1793. In effect, no correspondent as much as mentioned the
war.
Incidentally, the usual way of dealing with the increase in pauperism caused by
a bad harvest and adverse weather conditions resulting in unemployment con-