Labor and Character

ECONOMICS OF THE HOUR--J. St. Loe Strachey--Putnam ($2.00).

It is primarily for the British working class that Mr. Strachey writes, yet all he says can be read with much profit by the workers of other countries and by so-called intelligensia, from the struggling student immersed in dry text books to the "hardest-boiled" employer of mankind.

Economics is a subject often treated as an incurable, contagious disease: the people who contract it are segregated by their fellows; the people who escape it take precaution against infection. In Mr. Strachey's book, however, the germs have been sterilized and, far from needing or deserving quarantine, it should be taken by some as inoculation against Radical Socialism and by others against Ultra Conservatism. In simpler terms, this antitoxin is the quintessence of applied economics made easy by Mr. Strachey's facile pen.

The author disagrees with the late and, perhaps, unlamented Karl Marx that Labor is the sole cause of value. He shows that value is fixed by "demand and the limitation of supply, or, in other words, demand and a certain difficulty of attainment." He goes on to say that on demand, and not on limited supply, can be found the panacea for which the laboring classes search. The significance of this is apparent, and Mr. Strachey brings it out in discussing Labor as a partner of industry; for, as demand is the raison d'etre of wealth derived through the medium of Labor, it should govern Labor's attitude to employers, to strikes and to itself. In other words, to borrow Mr. Strachey's simile, if Labor wants a larger share of the cake, a larger cake must be made and a larger cake can only be made if there are enough people who want to eat it.