It is appropriate that the last speaker should have intervened in this debate. He stood for election when a topic the discussion of which is forbidden to-day was uppermost and lost a bagful of votes, as well as I remember. That particular Constitution did not do him any good. I understand that Deputies shuddered when they saw the Deputy's position and they did not know what was ahead or behind them. If I might make one slight reference to the forbidden topic it would be to suggest that the Deputy should visit the camp on the Curragh which has been rapidly reconstructed for a lot of his ex-colleagues. I think if he went down there he might hear remarks about the Constitution that would not please him. The thing that strikes anyone about this is that right in the forefront we are faced with figures for two classes of Estimates, for last year and this year. As far as the bulk figures go for this Estimate and the one discussed last year, there is a small increase of something under £250,000, and when the Minister comes to conclude, I hope he will be able to tell us whether this Estimate for 1940-41, with £30,500,000 put down as a bulk amount on the cover, really represents actuality.
I am only interested in one item—the Army Vote—at page 327 where I find that the amount for warlike stores is £121,000, after certain deductions which do not matter. We are told that in comparison, the figure for 1939-40 was £381,000. When I turn to the page of the current year's Estimate, I find that warlike stores are given as £1,207,000. There appears to be a gap of £1,000,000. The Estimate this year tells us that the Estimate for the current year was something short of £400,000, but when we turn to the Estimate for 1939-40 that figure is nowhere to be found, and if that figure is simply taken out in order to delude the people, it is hardly fair treatment. If it is taken out because the Ministry does not know whether they want something short of £1,000,000 for expenditure on warlike stores, that is a matter for further inquiry. The first time we were introduced to this enormous sum for the defence of the country was when the Taoiseach was speaking in the debate on February, 1939, and there indicated that he was going to ask for £2,000,000 under two headings in connection with the defence of the country mainly against aircraft. That £2,000,000 was £207,000 last year, and this year the new sum of £170,000 is required. We were told it was not an actual Vote or re-Vote, but was only a token Vote, although the Minister had felt it necessary to ask for money for warlike stores that were required. What is the situation? Was a mistake made of about £2,000,000? Was it that we were prepared to combine forces with England against everyone that attacked us or just because we wanted ammunition and still want it but cannot get it? It is understandable that the prices of warlike stores have increased, and as there are so many people looking for warlike stores now in the only place that we can get them, which is England, we may be crushed out by competitors. It may be. I am not suggesting this, but I understand a better solution has been discovered, and that is to put the buying and purchase of ammunition under the present Minister for Supplies in the hope that he will be as effective about it as he was about sugar, because then we will never have to spend any money on ammunition.
There is also a suggestion which the Minister might take to heart—that if the present Minister for Supplies was in charge of the Magazine Fort it would be adequate because if raiders got in they would have nothing to get and there would be much more difficulty in getting through the red tape of the Civil Service than in getting through the sentries. I suggest that the Estimate we have before us has to be compared not on the basis of £30,500,000 for the year we are entering on and the £31,250,000 last year, but with the £31,500,000. Unless the Ministry will now confess that their ideas of an expenditure of £970,000 were nonsensical, unless they make that confession the people are really being deluded. Whether it is £30,500,000 we have to subscribe this year or £31,500,000 does not matter a whole lot. The comparison I would like to have is a comparison with the figures in the Estimate of 1931-32, where the figure for the expenditure of the State as far as these public services are concerned was less than £22,000,000. Comparing that with the Book of Estimates here, there is an advance of £8,500,000. I suggest that it is really an advance of £9,500,000 in the demands put on the people. £9,500,000 is a hefty sum. It is not all spent on social services or anything like it. There is a vast amount of extravagance going on and a vast amount of diversion of the people's money into unprofitable channels. If either the waste or the extravagance could be curtailed, there is sufficient money left for the provision of the social services that a Deputy like Deputy McCann wants to boast of.
Deputy McCann should beware about boasting too loudly of social services. There are many people listening to him, including certain clergymen who are reputed to be giving thought to this question of economics in the State, and of having expressed the view that social services are more a badge of inferiority and decay than anything else. Why should it be a matter for boasting that this State is having to subscribe say £1,000,000 for unemployment insurance? Surely the State would be much better off if there was no such requirement and if no money had to be spent on unemployment? The only thing one can say is that it is better to have that money supplied to those people if work cannot be found for them. If nothing else can be done, and if people cannot make provision for themselves, then it is possibly right that there should be some joy taken in the fact that the annual amount of money which we can spare is so big. These social services are not all on the credit side. If we had an organisation of society on a proper basis in this country, it is possible and certainly probable, that a lot of the things in the nature of social services which are now talked about in these enthusiastic terms would be outside our ken.
Despite the social services, despite the vast amount of expenditure that there is, I do not think that any Deputy can say that in his movement through this country he finds any feeling of joy, enthusiasm or brightness at present. Deputy McCann referred to the people who were attracted to a particular movement by reading the writings of a certain leader of ours. There certainly was spirit and enthusiasm in the country in those days. But that spirit has departed. There is nothing at present but disillusion, a certain intention expressed on the part of people that they will kick over the traces, and a definite acceptance of disbelief in the value of institutions. One hears the view everywhere that there is no good carrying on with the present system. There are too many people anxious to take that easy means and to say: "Let us have a change of method and of system and the other changes will come." If we have all these vast social services, if the people are being provided with houses, unemployment assistance, schemes for their betterment and a wise handling of their economics in agriculture and industry, if they are looking after the widows and orphans and everything else that has been pointed to, one would expect a lightness and gaiety in country life at present. I suggest without any possibility of contradiction that that is not the case. There is no Deputy, who is in touch with the country at all, who does not get impressed on him that the thing that is most apparent in the people's minds is despair. They do not see any way out of the condition into which they have been got, and they see no hope from the continuance of the present Government.
The trouble about that is that if one talks to these people to try and convince them by some sort of argument or reasoning that the picture need not be so blackly painted, that there is, in any event, a resilience in affairs here, and that there is in the background a reserve upon which we can draw and on which a better situation can be developed: when an attempt is made on these lines, one is faced with the fact that there are too many tests to the contrary. I wonder how many people really can point to any item savouring of hope, of inducing any optimistic expectation when they survey this country and apply the ordinary tests by which the prosperity and good of a country are usually tested. There is no doubt that, so far as the ordinary assets of the country are concerned in the sense of capital reserves, these for years past have been definitely and steadily wasted. The argument might be made—and it is a satisfactory argument—on that point that one can look with equanimity on foreign assets being brought home if these appear to be lucratively employed here. There are other tests for that. If it were simply bringing in a certain amount of money for the bridging of a certain gap which has occurred here, it might not be too bad if it were properly invested here. Then there is another test, if the money were lucratively invested here there should be some improvement either in national production or in the matter of employment. That can be surveyed now.
The population of the country is falling. Emigration had been always a danger to this country. In the years following the foundation of the State it was recognised with joy that the annual drain through emigration was steadily lessening. There came a point when it had stopped, and even where more people were coming back to the country than were leaving it yearly. But then the tide turned the other way. We found people were being attracted outside the shores of the country. If you take it in periods of five years, there was a period up to 1931-2 when the situation was righting itself and there was a bigger influx than efflux from the country. Then there was a five years' period in which they began to go again. There was then the bad period in which the tide of emigration turned once more against the country with the added disadvantage that, instead of our people, as in the olden days, going to a country where they met their friends, where they were at home, though in an exile's home, and from which they sent subventions home, the people were going across the water, going to very little in the way of attractive employment, and they certainly were not going to employment which was such as to enable them to send home the amounts that used to come in here and which counted as a large item in the redressing of the adverse trade balance.
In addition to that, the standard of living has been falling. Two or three angles of view may be had on that. The best angle is that the cost of everything in the country has been steadily mounting for five or seven years. The costs of agriculture have gone up through the nonsensical schemes imposed on the country. The costs on industry need only be mentioned. There is no question as to the costs of industrial production having increased. The only matter that arises is just the exact point to which the increase has gone. The cost of housing notoriously has increased. Everything that counts in life has increased in the last four or five years. That general increase in the price level has meant that the wages on which an unfortunate man is depending for sustenance for himself and his wife and family have not the purchasing power which they used to have. The increase in the price level all round means that there is a decrease in the standard of living in the country, and it is notable that a decrease in the standard of living in any country, even a decrease beyond the level achieved in any country, which is easy of access, almost inevitably shows itself in a decrease in population. People will fly from a country with a low standard of living to places where there is a higher standard. That has been the situation here. In addition to that, we have reached a point that is most conspicuous in these Estimates, an increase in taxation and an increase in expenditure in this State. The matter to be determined is whether or not this money has been expended on social services. That is a point which it is proper for this House to probe and to probe very fully in discussing the Estimates before us. In going through these Estimates it will be possible to effect a detailed comparison with the present Estimates and the amounts charged against the people under the same headings in 1931-1932. In order to get some clarity on that matter one has only to see the percentage of increase in the amounts under these headings.
There was one point raised on Friday last, and I think the Minister might answer it now. It is a bad sign of a country when a demand is made for moneys to be subscribed for State purposes and when the people refuse to subscribe these moneys. When a Government looks for loans it is a bad sign when they cannot get these loans from the people; that they can only get them by going to the banks and get them out of moneys put into the banks by the customers of these banks. It is a bad sign when the people themselves are not anxious to subscribe. When the banks subscribe moneys lodged in them by the people, they do not do so willingly. On this point the Minister can tell us, if he cares, how much money did he get on the last flotation of bonds; what amount of that was taken up by the ordinary subscriber and what was the average subscription. The Minister can tell us what amount was really subscribed by the ordinary people and how much was taken up by underwriters. If the Minister does go into these details let him tell us plainly and clearly how much of that money was subscribed by the people throughout the country, not including moneys put in by concerns completely or almost completely under Government control where the Government could induce subscriptions which the people concerned might not think it wise to make. In the case of other and previous loans it was easy to find out how the subscriptions to the loan went. In the case of the last loan the Minister found himself in the awkward position that recourse had to be had to the underwriters. It was the second time in the history of the country that that happened.
We are in the mood of sacrifices still in this country. At least we are in the mood in which the Minister demands sacrifices from us. Since the Taoiseach came into office the cry for sacrifice has been heard in this country. Sacrifice has been demanded for some purpose or other. At one time it used to be sacrifice from the whole community in order to get the national advance towards sovereignty. Then there was a little bit of a change. The farmers were asked to make sacrifices. They were told that when the annuities question was fought to a finish it was eventually going to result in something to their benefit. At that time certain benefits were thrown benevolently before the industrialists. Now the cry is new sacrifices. Sacrifices are now beginning to be asked from the industrialists. They are asked to remember that the agriculturists are the foundation of the whole communal life here; the industrialists are asked to remember all that was done for them in the past years. They are now asked to play their part and to make sacrifices for the common good. The sacrifices are real. They have been imposed but we do not seem to be getting any further. There was always the bait that the sacrifices were only to last for a little time and that eventually the people who made the sacrifice would benefit much more than they had suffered by the imposition of the sacrifice. They are still asked for sacrifices and the promise of benefit is still in the future. Nobody except a small group of favoured people appear to be able to cash-in and gain on the sacrifices imposed on their fellows. There was this small group who got the benefit of the waste and the extravagance.
There has been a lot of favouritism for the last five years. There has been profiteering in this country on a bad scale for years past; there is no question of contradiction in this. It is only a question of degree or difference. So bad has this profiteering become that at, I think, the last function which the industrialists of this country held here in Dublin, one found in the papers the next day that a speech was made welcoming that the period of soft and easy tariffs was over and also making the defence that even if there were a few black sheep in the industrialist group it was not fair to have them all tarnished with profiteering. One of the provocations of life in this country at the moment is that everything that the people have to sell is falling and everything the people have to buy has risen. One is able to see groups of people with life made easy for them, and the means of securing profits and money made easy for them, so easy that the term "profiteer" is applied to them. Of that there is no longer any contradiction. It is only a question of arguing how far do the profits go and how numerous were the people who availed themselves of profiteering. The Government themselves established amongst others two commissions. One of these dealt with the matter of bacon. There was a report by that commission which indicated profiteering on a very large scale. That profiteering was accompanied by a still further evil—that people of business repute who had been put into a position of trust had abused their public trust for the sake of private gain. When that sort of phrase in applied to anybody else it generally has reprecussions in the law courts. All that has happened in this case is that these people have been held up to odium in the papers and here in the Dáil. But they can chuckle over that when they can get away with £300,000 profits. The other commission reported on the price of wheat and flour. The report of that commission is still before the Government. They have taken no action on it. Debate after debate has occurred in this connection and the answer of the Government no matter what was revealed by that report is that the position is satisfactory whereas the position has worsened since. But the Government never denied they had this report. They casually put forward here an ex-parte statement from the flour interests, but they have done nothing to place before the House figures that could be argued here.
Deputy McCann says that people are very concerned about housing and whether the policy of the present Government as shown in recent years would be abandoned if there was a change of Government.
The first answer to Deputy McCann is that housing activity has been abandoned or, at least, partially suspended for the very good reason that it was found to be too expensive. It seemed to me to be a matter requiring more comment than it has, so far, got that, at a recent conference in Dublin, the situation in a country we have often held up to us for admiration and as an example was examined in a paper which was read. The situation in Portugal was brought under review by a lecturer, and amongst other things, it emerged that the leader of that country, when the country was as clamant for reforms as this country, decided that he would engineer no reforms on this question of housing until such time as the people could earn sufficient money in wages to be able to pay the extra rents which would be demanded for the new houses. We have here, as a sort of sidelight, evidence given before a commission to the effect that people taken out of slum quarters and put into good areas on the outskirts of the city have been found to be creeping back in large numbers to their former slum dwellings because of the increased expenditure imposed upon them by the new houses with which they have been provided, mainly, at the public expense.
Some years ago, the St. Vincent de Paul Society of this city reported in a very gloomy way on the position in this connection. They gave credit to the people engaged in this housing experiment but, while giving them praise, they said that there was a result which should have been foreseen because a similar result had shown itself when development of the same type was undertaken in England. The end of the comment of the St. Vincent de Paul Society was that it was found that people who had been able to support themselves in bad-type dwellings and who had been able to pay the rents asked from them in the city, when transported to Crumlin and other places on the outskirts of the city had less to spend on food even in time of illness. That was the reason why so many of them fled from their better dwellings in Crumlin and elsewhere back into the slum areas. Another searchlight was thrown on this matter in a lecture fortified by figures which have not been contradicted. A test was made in a city in England, the situation in which is comparable with the situation here as regards this matter. Statistics were prepared affecting the people while living in these slum areas and after they were removed to their new abodes as showing the impact of the new conditions on their health. The amazing result was shown by the figures that the mortality returns went up heavily when these people were transferred to better houses. The increase was very heavy so far as the young people and the very old were concerned, but it was heavy enough—18 per cent.—in the intermediate ages. When the returns were analysed, it was found that the increased mortality turned on this—that these people could not spend as much as they had been able to spend on nutriment and were dying faster. We have the same situation here, and we have the same situation—good intentions in the background and bad results —in regard to all these schemes for which the Ministry have dragged money from the people during the past half dozen years.
There has been waste, and terrible waste, in regard to schemes that now are, confessedly, failures. There has been an exchange of Ministers and Departments, and the occupations of most of these Ministers in recent months has been "telling the tale", so to speak, on their predecessors, deriding the policy which went before, a turning of the back on the old-time policy and disavowal of most of what the predecessor in office had done. We, on this side, have criticised things like the sugar-beet scheme, the artificial aid given to the growing of wheat, the amount of money expended on industrial alcohol factories and the ludicrous claims made and extravagant language used in connection with peat development. So many foolish things were said that it is hardly worth while reminding the House of some of them, but we were told on one occasion by the Minister promulgating the peat device that peat would soon be the second biggest industry in the country —second only to agriculture. Some years afterwards, we got a confession of failure in regard to one of these experiments—the Ticknevin bog—only to be met a few weeks ago with a demand for more money to carry on this particular blunder a few stages further. When people talk of social services and the amount of money spent on social services, they ought to turn the other eye to the small resources of this country and to the way in which these have been dissipated during the last half dozen years. We have glaring examples of cases in which money was paid away without any prospect of a return even from the beginning. When an attempt was made to substantiate the claim that there might be a return, it was made on figures that the expert brought in to advise had disproved before the experiment was put on foot. Yet, the experiment had to go on—to our cost.
There is one big test in all this matter. It was dealt with by Deputy Mulcahy and Deputy Dillon and I want briefly to refer to it. Vast sums of money have been extracted from the people by the present Government. It is, I think, an accepted fact that the assets we had invested abroad have diminished. We had the excuse made that it is a good thing to bring home these assets and employ them at home. We were also told, in defence of the policy of extracting money from the people, that this money was circulated in the country and put to good use. If there is any truth in that defence, then there should be some sign of betterment in the country. The sign everybody is looking for is improvement in respect of employment. The test generally applied to the bettering or worsening of conditions here is: how are the figures for unemployment or, in contrast, what are the figures for employment? Deputy Mulcahy subjected certain figures given us officially to a test and check with such a remarkable result that it is worth while calling attention to them again. Deputies will know from their parliamentary experience that two sets of figures can be brought in, as a matter of investigation, in order to form a judgment on the question of the growth of employment in the country. One set relates to the Unemployment Insurance Fund. The contributions to that fund are derived from people in occupations described as "insurable". The other set relates to the National Health Insurance Fund, where the contributors are not so limited. The contributors to the National Health Insurance Fund cover comprehensively all the workers of a certain standard of employment. The Government have published a number of pamphlets, starting in a particular year and continuing since, under the head of "The Trend of Employment and Unemployment in the Saorstát." The first pamphlet was published in 1935. On page 29, this phrase occurs as justifying the use of these contribution-income figures as the test: "While insurance funds are probably the most reliable indicators of the trend of employment in the aggregate, other statistics are available for analysing the trend in individual industries." Following from that, the "other statistics" are, to a small extent, gone into but the conclusion is drawn that the first statement is the important one —that the insurance funds are the most reliable indicators of the trend of employment in the aggregate. The figure which is specially relied upon in this report published by the Government is the figure of the number of persons employed whole-time as derived from the national health insurance net contribution income. Taking this test, which the Government themselves say is the most reliable indicator of the trend of employment in the aggregate, it is. possible to make a comparison with the years in which the Government believed that this country was being run into bankruptcy by the evil administration of their predecessors.
The comparison that would fall to be made would be as between the period ending 1932 and the period since. It is possible to make that comparison, and to get a certain picture from it. There are one or two things which have to be cleared away at the foundation of this matter before the comparison can be properly instituted. So far as the National Health Fund itself is concerned, we can take, absolutely without any deduction, whatever is the increase in the fund for a certain period of five years and the increase for a certain period of eight years, and we can put these two periods in contrast. That shows that, as between 1926 and 1931, the number of people, that is, reducing the income to terms of people, in employment increased by 57,000. If you take, without any subtraction whatever to allow for complicating factors, the figure for the period 1931-39, an eight year period, there is shown an increase of 75,000 people. Without any deduction for any complicating factors, that is what is revealed: that employment increased by 57,000 as between 1926 and 1931, a five-year period, and by 75,000 between 1931 and 1939, an eight-year period. The average over each of these periods is 11,400 people, who apparently went into employment in that period, each year showing that increase over the previous year. In the other period, the average is 9,375 people.
If those two figures, without any explanation, stand alone, there is something for which the Government have to make an answer: that, in a time in which it was said that this country was going into bankruptcy, when no attention was being paid to industry or agriculture, when there was no fostering by artificial devices, as we were told, and when, in fact, we were supposed to be bending all our efforts towards pleasing our ancient enemies, the British, nevertheless and despite the fact that we were not paying any attention to the maintenance of trade, commerce and industry, employment increased at the rate of 11,000 per annum; and that when this Government came in and had a longer period of over eight years in which to bend their efforts towards the artificial fostering of trade and industry, they could only achieve an increase in employment at the rate of 9,375 per annum. If those figures stand alone, it shows a remarkable situation.
Remember that the increase of 11,400 persons was brought about with less taxation, less on the Estimates in the way of these grand social services and less hardship everywhere, and in a period in which the emigration problem was being solved and people were being induced to stay at home; while the increase of 9,375 came about in a period in which the people were having their money taken from them for distribution, as we are told, better by the Government than they could distribute it themselves, when people were beginning to fly away from the country and when the population was decreasing. there are two figures—11,400 persons per annum in the five year period, which was a period of approaching depression, and 9,375 persons in a period in which the world depression was certainly not as effective in relation to this country as in the previous period, and in which the situation in Britain, which has an immediate reaction in this country, was improving, whereas in the previous five year period it had been disimproving.
There are complicating factors which have to be attended to, and they come under three heads. It is possible to put people into employment artificially. One of the artificial devices employed was vast expenditure of money on a housing programme. People can be pushed into employment through vast expenditure on housing. Whether anybody will ever live in those houses, or pay an adequate or economic rent for them, or whether the houses will ultimately fall to be a burden on the community is outside the present argument, but it is possible, taking the mere test of employment, to get people put into employment by vast expenditure on housing; and there was vast expenditure on housing in this eight year period as opposed to the previous five year period. It is possible to give another stimulus by voting and expending very big sums on relief works and, in that way, there will be an artificial increase in employment, for which, of course, eventually in the way of added national debt or taxation, the people will pay. Notwithstanding that, it is possible to get some artificial increase in employment by this means. In addition, there is the third matter, which has to be attended to in a comparison of these years. It is possible still further to increase the artificiality of the employment. In our time, we never thought of the device of making people work three or three and a half days, and having that counted as a full week, so far as the fund is concerned. That was left to our successors.
Undoubtedly, right through this whole argument, there is the question of how far employment is continuous, but whether it is haphazard, casual, intermittent or continuous, it is very much the same, one year with the other, and the only thing which one has to take account of is whether a device is adopted which definitely increases the artificial or half-time nature of the employment. These three factors are a complication. So far as one of them is concerned, Deputy General Mulcahy queried it very often with the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance. He got a reply which showed that over the year 1939, the average number of people employed on relief works, the average number of people put into artificial employment by the provision of relief money, was nearly 15,000, and it was stated that the average weekly spell of employment given to these people was between three and four days. It emerges that people who were working only three or four days in the week were being counted in the fund as if they were working the whole week. A certain deduction has to be made in order to correct that.
Not to complicate the matter too much; the best way of making the deduction is to look at the amount of money expended on relief works in 1931 and the amount expended in 1939, and to find out what is the employment given by the increased expenditure in the latter period. The same can be done with regard to housing. One can easily find from statistical information the number of houses (a) built and (b) reconstructed, in 1931, and, similarly, the number of houses built or reconstructed in 1939. There is the test which the Department of Local Government ordinarily apply to these houses. They count one-and-a-half people per house per annum for building and a quarter of an individual per annum for reconstruction. We can get these factors and apply them to the increased money spent in order to get the artificial increase in employment as between 1931 and 1939, and similarly with regard to housing. If these complicating factors are then dealt with and changes made in the figures, the result comes out that, from the 417,000 people who go into the Table shown on page 28 of this pamphlet, as representing approximately the number of persons employed whole-time in 1939, nearly 15,000 have to be deducted by reason of the increase through relief works, which brings the figure down to 402,000 people.
In regard to the housing figure, the question was asked and we were told that the yearly number of houses built pre-1932 was about 3,350. The employment given on them was about 5,000. In 1939, taking the average over the years before that, the number of houses constructed was about 10,500, and the number reconstructed was very nearly 4,000. On applying the test of multiplying by one-and-a-quarter for those two different items, we find there was artificial employment by reason of increased expenditure on housing to the extent of nearly 10,000 people. If that is deducted from this figure of 417,000, one can get to the proper comparison, and the proper comparison is that there were 57,000 people put into employment in the five years between 1926 and 1931, or an average of 11,000 per annum, and in the eight years between 1931 and 1939 there were 50,486, or an average of 6,310. Those figures are the result of calculations made in this pamphlet offered by the Government and the result of a Parliamentary Question which established that the absolute figure for employment in the year 1939 as based upon national health insurance contributions is 417,000. The net result of it is that it is possible to find, in what is called a decaying period, employment increasing in five years by 57,000 people, and when those complicating factors are removed, in eight years under the present Government's supervision increasing by 50,000—as opposed to 57,000 in five years. Relate that back to the expenditure of money, relate it back to the decreased assets, relate it back to the argument that we have had about bringing back our assets and employing them lucratively at home, and ask if this money was brought back and employed lucratively at home would it not have shown better results from the point of view of employment than those figures given to Deputy Mulcahy and founded on official information actually show.
The only thing that remains to be brought into the calculation is that matter to which I referred earlier; this country, as far as its economics are concerned, is affected by what happens in Great Britain. The period that I have taken for contrast is the period between 1926 and 1931, and the period from the end of 1931 to the year 1939. This country is definitely affected by business activity in Great Britain. It is further affected by world activity, although the effect of world activity is lessened to a certain extent by the buffer that there is as between world depression generally and British activity, in its effects upon this country.
In the period 1926 to 1931 there occurred the worst economic depression that history has known. It was referred to by Deputy General Mulcahy in this House as having been described by the late Pope as a plague, the worst that had been known since the time of the Flood. He referred to its general effects upon mankind, and described it as a scourage and a plague worse than anything known since the time of the Flood. With that scourge and plague affecting England—and it did affect England, as shown by the ordinary figures for the business trend in England—and having its repercussions here, it was nevertheless possible to get, without any of those artificial aids, the employment I have spoken of, and it was possible in those circumstances to produce a result which called for favourable comment by the Economic Commission of the League of Nations, the report of which was published in the year 1931. I remarked that there were two countries picked out as countries that had avoided the worst effects of the depression, that is Denmark and Ireland. That was because of the natural type of farming economy which the farmers of those countries had in their own best interests and in the interests of their countries chosen to employ. Then the Government here swept in with its new ideas about how that natural economy was to be changed. At the time that they did come in the depression had moved slightly down. It was bad in 1931, and reached a low point towards the end of 1932. By the end of 1932, business activity in England was higher than it had been in 1931, and by the end of 1933, or certainly by the end of 1933-4, it was as high as it had been at the highest point for the previous five years. It swung still further: the trend of employment was progressively upwards from 1935, 1936 and 1937, and although there was some decline in 1938, it never reached below the point it had come to in 1939. One would require some method of illustrating this pictorially to get the full picture of that. If it were possible here to get a curve drawn showing our decline over the years, and superimpose upon the curve of that decline a picture of the increased business activity in England, we would have the amazing spectacle that at a time when, prior to 1931, business activity was very badly on the decline in England, things were not shaken here to any great extent. The figure in England then swung upwards to an amazing height, and never up to 1939 dropped below the highest point it had been at——
