Abstract
MR. LLOYD GEORGE'S scheme of national reconstruction is outlined in a pamphlet entitled “Organizing Prosperity” (Ivor Nicholson and Watson. 6d.). His main thesis is that our economic system can be amended without being scrapped, and that the immense advantages of individual enterprise, energy and initiative which our present economic system fosters are not to be lightly sacrificed. They must rather be controlled and cultivated so that they may yield an ordered harvest for the nation. He gives first place to the land as a means of finding not only temporary employment, during a period of exceptional trade depression, but also permanent employment for our surplus population. Other projects advocated include housing and slum clearance, electrification of suburban railways, improvement of ports and docks, extension and improvement of electrical supply, road developments, water supply, telephone extensions and financial assistance for development of oversea markets. These various schemes would be financed by a ‘prosperity loan’, while the carrying out of the programme would be entrusted to a National Development Board consisting of a small body of persons of distinguished competence drawn from industry, commerce, finance, workers and consumers who would be appointed for a definite term and would be responsible to the Cabinet. But since a Cabinet of about a score of Departmental Ministers is an unsuitable body to give full and dispassionate consideration to bold schemes of national reconstruction, Mr. Lloyd George advocates a reversion to the War-time arrangement of an executive consisting of the Prime Minister and four or five Ministers without departmental duties.
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Mr. Lloyd George's Scheme of National Reconstruction. Nature 136, 174 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136174b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136174b0