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WORLD~CRISIS : INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS 269
likely to disappear in the near future with. what we custo~
marily know as business recovery. But certain features
have come to stay and are likely to liquidate themselves
only in the general process of the world's .economic evolu~
tion. This is to be a "long run" phenomenon which is
perhaps to be counted in terms of half a generation, a
generation or so.
lt should appear that we are to~day witnessing the
transformation of the world's economic and social struc~
ture on a monumental scale and its transition to the next
. stage or-epoch of its possibilities. The processes involved
are really so many items constituting the final consum~
mation of what may be called the "Second Industrial
Revolution" in certain regions and of the "First Indus~
trial Revolution" in others. The present CrISIS
represents altogether a step in the mobilisation of
the world from a lower to a comparatively higher standard
of living and the promotion of a higher purchasing
· capacity of the peoples. Mankind is being keyed up
to an elevated plane of efficiency and culture.
A question arises at once automatically as follows:
Is it not rather paradoxical to connect natio.!!wide unem~
ployment~crisis with an epochal lift of millions in the
standard of living and efficiency? The ariswer should
be "--Perhaps yes, but yet not unreasonably." It is
necessary to analyse the unemployment situation
minutely. Several factors have contributed to the con~
· temporary volumes of unemployment. It is important
· to recall that during the Gr~at War many jobs were for
the first time created for thousands and hundreds of
thousands of men and women such as had no employ~
ment in the modem trade union sense previous to 1914.