1 8 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



of its individuals. Now a careful study of the literature of planning 

 shows that it deals mainly with planning the known, and hardly at 

 all with planning for changes in the known. Although it contem- 

 plates ' planned ' research, it does not generally provide for intro- 

 ducing the results of new research into the plan, and for dealing 

 with the actual impact — the unemployment, redirection of skill, 

 and location, and the breaking of sentimental ties that distinguish 

 men from robots. It seems to have not many more expedients 

 for this human problem than our quasi-individualist society with its 

 alleged irresponsibility. It also tends to assume that we can tell in 

 advance what will succeed in public demand and what will be super- 

 seded. There is nothing more difficult, and the attempt to judge 

 correctly under the intellectual stimulus of high profits and risk of 

 great losses is at least as likely to succeed as the less personally vital 

 decision on a committee. Would a planning committee, for example, 

 planning a new hotel in 1904, have known any better than capitalist 

 prevision that the fifteen bathrooms then considered adequate for 

 social demand, ought really to have been ten times that number if the 

 hotel was not to be considered obsolete thirty years later ? Prevision 

 thought of in terms of hindsight is easy, and few scientists have 

 enjoyed the responsibility of making practical decisions as to what 

 the public will want far ahead. They, therefore, tend to think of 

 prevision in terms of knowledge and appreciation of particular 

 scientific possibilities , whereas it involves unknown demand schedules , 

 the unceasing baffling principle of substitution, the inertia of 

 institutions, the crusts of tradition and the queer incalculability of 

 mass mind. Of course, in a world where people go where they are 

 told, when they are told, do what they are instructed to do, accept 

 the reward they are allotted, consume what is provided for them, 

 and what is manifestly so scientifically ' good for them ' these 

 difficulties need not arise. The human problem will then be the 

 ' Impact of Planning.' I am not here examining the economics of 

 planning as such, but only indicating that it does not provide auto- 

 matically the secret of correct prevision in scientific innovation. 

 When correct prevision is possible a committee can aim at planning 

 with a minimum disturbance and wastage (and has the advantage 

 over individuals acting competitively), but for such innovation as 

 proves to be necessary it does not obviate the human disturbance or 

 radically change its character. The parts of human life are co- 

 ordinated and some are more capable of quick alteration than others, 

 while all are mutually involved. One may consider the analogy of a 

 railway system which has evolved, partly empirically and partly 

 consciously, as a co-ordinated whole. Suddenly the customary 

 speed is radically changed, and then it may be that all the factors are 

 inappropriate — distance between signals, braking power, radius of 



