Speculations concerning employment dynamics

This discussion, based upon an address delivered before Professor Philip Cabot´s Business Men´s Group at the Harvard Business School, is presented here for the purpose of stimulating thought among AIEE members on a problem of importance to all engineers; the “Letters to the Editor” columns are open to contributions on this current topic. Engineers are well schooled in the distinction between statics and dynamics. Hence a title has been chosen which suggests that the problem of maintaining employment is dynamic in character and involves the discovery of reactions which can be used to balance certain varying social forces. The cycle of availability of work followed by scarcity has doubtless operated as unremittingly down through the ages as peace and war. And at long last, as in the case of war, we are beginning to realize that any considerable and sustained degree of unemployment presents a serious threat to the foundations of liberal society. The discovery of adroit means to damp employment oscillations is a first-line problem in every industrial nation. In fact, there are cogent reasons for believing that the threat of war is itself inherent in insecurity of employment. Peace both within and without are therefore mutually at issue.