scientifically adjusted so as to counteract the ebb of private industry. Such a change, it is said, would involve no expenditure save forethought, and would be a preventive instead of a palliative. Distress would not be relieved but obviated, and there would be no artificial installation of those useless works which are the targets for the universal anathemas of economists of every school and of every age.
Yet this and other similar suggestions obviously do not penetrate to the root and core of the disease. The fundamental evil is not so much that demand is intermittent, as that its whole power and intensity are on a relatively low scale. The strengthening of demand is the genuine cure. We are at the threshold of this fundamental reformation, but the future of England will see us entering fully upon it.
There are two main expedients by which this country will eventually cure the weakness of demand. Although, as already pointed out, for nearly a hundred years our capital has gone abroad to build up markets, yet, in fact, from 1890 up to 1903 at any rate, it must be said that, for several reasons, our efforts in this direction were comparatively mediocre and unsatisfactory. For instance, we were devoting a relatively small amount of capital to railway construction in the colonies, in India, and foreign countries, or to the development of the agricultural resources of those countries. Since then, however, we have entered upon those undertakings with greater activity. The best authority calculates that, at the present date, our
