The depression is over and prosperity is here once again. This is the good news discovered by politicians, bankers and captains of industry and passed on to the workers in speeches and articles up and down the country. The Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr Neville Chamberlain, in a speech at Birmingham on January 29th said that the Midlands are "enjoying a greater prosperity than had ever been known in the history of living people". (The Times. January 30th. 1937.) Mr Colin Campbell. Chairman of the National Provincial Bank. Ltd., in his survey of the country's affairs at the annual meeting of his bank, sees "prosperity firmly based on well-distributed purchasing power". (Economist, January 30th. 1937.) Indeed, the bankers and economists are becoming alarmed at the comparative shortage of skilled labour and consequent ability of the workers to secure wage increases. The question occupying their minds is when the next slump is due to break and whether by any means they or the governments can prevent it.
It need hardly be said that the prosperity which so impresses the spokesmen of the propertied class is the prosperity of that class, hence their view that higher wages due to scarcity of labour is an "evil".
[From an article "This Prosperity", Socialist Standard, April 1937.]
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