Page 413 - clra62_0019-(GIPE)

XXXI.

THE PRESENT ECONOMIC d)NDITIONS AND OUTLOOK FOR
THE UNITED KINGDOM.
HAT is the economic outlook for the United
W Kingdom at the beginning of a new century,
following on a century of astonishing material develop-
ment and several centuries of steady advance? Is the
country II played out," as many seem disposed to be-
lieve; or are the general conditions still favourable to
economic advance and prosperity? The inquiry, apart
from political issues, may perhaps not be uninteresting
as necessitating some discussion of the conditions of
prosperity among industrial communities.
I n entering on such a discussion I wish to make
clear, what is hardly recognised popularly, but what is
really of the essence of any consideration of the general
welfare of a country, that the bulk of the exchanges in
every community, with rare exceptions, is, and must
be, not between the community and the outside world,
but among the members of the community themselves.
The main quantity of business is in fact always local.
The members of the community mainly work "for each
other and exchange services with each other. The
butcher, the baker, the tailor, the dressmaker, the
builder, the house decorator and furnisher, the makers
of gas and electricity, the doctors, the lawyers, the
cler:gymen, the staffs of newspapers and periodicals,
-tl}e public entertainers, the postmen, the railway and
tramway servants~the hairdressers, the laundry women,
and many more servants of the commaDity, whatever
raw materials and implements they use, do in fact
work on which a great deal, if not the greater part, of
4 0 5