Afterthoughts on Paley
mT HERE is now no danger of confusing one Paley with another. But in nineteenthcentury England Paley's Evidences was a household word. To pass an examination on this theological treatise was obligatory for Cambridge undergraduates; with certain alternatives allowed, it has remained an examination text until comparatively recent times. A direct descendant of the famous eighteenthcentury ecclesiastic was Mary Paley, who married Alfred Marshall, and appears as joint author on the title page of The Economics of Industry, published in I879. A distinguished figure linking modern Cambridge with its past, she survived into the I940's. To the modern world, however, the name of Paley means the long and sumptuously produced document whose official title is A Report to the President by the President's Material Policy Commission, of June I952. It is not intended as a condemnation of the report, but rather as a commendation, to say that its primary object was to influence public opinion. To a reader outside the United States, it would appear that the magnificence of its production, the skillful choice of words, and still more of diagrams, whereby simple but important points are unobtrusively yet firmly driven home to the mind of a reader not accustomed to economic literature, all seem to indicate that it was designed to influence business leaders and Congressmen, who are accustomed to having a great deal of printed matter put before them and are only willing to read that which conforms to the highest standards of presentation. This otherwise plausible hypothesis, however, becomes very difficult to sustain when one considers the extraordinary length of the document. One has to assume that one's hypothetical business leader or Congressman, once his interest is really aroused, is willing to go on reading for days. Not that any of the text can be called superfluous; though some of it is more specifically addressed to economists and statisticians, some to legislators. And least of all let us decry the imputed objective. That the United States in the coming generation, in respect of a number of important raw materials at any rate, will have to be an importer on a largely increasing scale is a truth whose comprehension by legislators and businessmen is urgently necessary. It is indeed a truth of such importance that, if it fails to be properly disseminated and comprehended, the entire world may be thrown into disorder. Immediately on its publication, the report did succeed in attracting a great deal of attention in every quarter and in many countries, and comments and reviews in popular and other periodicals. At this date, no summary is necessary. But a few postscripts may be in order. We may open the discussion with what at first sight appears to be one of the most important commodities, one moreover where the question of imports cannot possibly arisenamely water. Here is American prodigality at its most striking. Water consumption has risen from 550 gallons per head per day in I900 to i ioo. now. Of the present day figure, it is true, slightly more than half is accounted for by irrigation of crops. But even the remainder, over 500 gallons per head per day, is enormously high. In European cities, consumption of water for all purposes generally does not exceed 50 American gallons 1 per head per day. Even modern cities in hot climates, in Australia and South Africa, rarely exceed a figure of I00. We see the matter in a different light, however, when we realize that, of the entire use of water apart from irrigating crops, industry takes 8o per cent, household and farm use only 20 per cent. We find a further concentration when we ascertain that much of the former figure represents the enormous demands of steel, chemicals, petroleum, and cooling of electric power generators (for this latter purpose brackish water, which could not have been used for any other purpose, is often used).
- DOI
- 10.2307/1925602
- Volume
- 36 (3)
- Pages
- 267
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