342 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.—F*. 
new demand in spending an existing income means a less demand for old 
products, and problems of unemployment through displacement become 
more frequent. ‘T'wo cases are distinguished : (a) innovation which enables 
old products to be supplied more easily, and thus frees purchasing power 
and workers simultaneously for new objects, and (}) innovation causing 
rival satisfactions in use (radios versus pianos) or later sources of supply 
slightly cheaper. ‘The latter case is the more acute. Under a planned 
society, the consumer can never get his own way and whim to the old extent, 
and the transfer could be made gradually, protecting old producers (i.e. 
skill and capital) from immediate extinction. Under an individualistic 
society, several palliatives are possible for examination : 
(1) State-aided transfer of labour. 
(2) Graduated protection from foreign competition. 
(3) Common aid to obsolescent industry or districts. 
(4) Compulsory special funds and additions to competitive costs, towards 
obsolescence, from new industries. 
(5) A ‘ contracting ’ industries’ tribunal. 
It is often only possible in retrospect to distinguish between depression 
and displacement. Sudden death and healthy bankruptcies are alone 
consistent with a highly individualistic society, but the new conditions make 
some modification essential. Displacement of labour has a human and 
social appeal, but over-rapid destruction of capital is also a social evil, if it 
undermines one of the essential conditions, security, in which alone capital 
would voluntarily come into existence. 
Mr. N. F. Hatt. 
The demand for a technique of economic change arises from an instinctive 
feeling that the economic system does not sufficiently rapidly avail itself of 
the new knowledge placed at its disposal by scientific research, and that 
consequently society in its r6le of consumer is deprived of benefits to which 
its growing knowledge and command of natural resources entitles it. 
The need for a technique of economic change is generally admitted, the 
difficulty is to discover the nature of the economic problem to which rapid 
developments in scientific knowledge give rise. The first part of the paper, 
therefore, reviews the general principles of economic theory with the 
object of isolating the obstacle to change. This obstacle is found in the 
increasing degree of specialisation both of men and capital equipment 
which technological change requires. ‘This specialisation acts cumulatively 
as an obstacle to further change. It does so by increasing the zone of ‘ un- 
certainty ” as a constituent element in the economic system. 
The second part of the paper discusses the technique necessary to over- 
come this ‘ uncertainty ’; its bearing upon changes in prices and output of . 
capital goods, and through these upon the general level of economic activity 
and employment. The paper concludes with a discussion of the bearing 
of changes in the zone of uncertainty upon monetary and investment policy. 
Mr. KENNETH Linpsay, M.P. 
Large-scale production, specialisation, speed of mechanisation are 
producing new social phenomena. The distressed area dependent on an 
old economy; the derelict villages dependent on a single industry ; the 
new estate. 
Areas of administration for utility and social services ; transport, electri- 
city, water, gas, town planning; housing, hospitals, education, relief, 
