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WORLD-CRISIS: INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS 275
scientific sense. In regard to the relative poverty or
prosperity at two different points of time, this aspect of
unemployment again is not a sure index.
All this discussion is n.ot to be interpreted as implying
that there is nothing in the present unemployment situation
which may be regarded as really unusual and exceptional.
Certainly, there is to be observed an exceptional
feature too. The years 1926-28 were characterised by
big doses of rationalization in industry, commerce and
agriculture. This involved the adoption on an extensive
scale of a large number of improved machineries, tool~.
implements as well as of financial and organizational
economies along· the entire front of economic life. 1o
Rationalization is not a new thing in economic history.
Since the beginning. of the Industrial Revolution towards
the end of the 18th century it has been going on piecemeal
in every branch of enterprise, but it is during the
Great War and since that it has been consummated in -a
phenomenal manner. Rationalization has always implied
labour saving and retrenchment. In the present instance
this has served to be the third factor in the volume of
unemployment. In the U.S.A. the annual increase in the
output per man was 3.~% during 1922-27 while the
figures 'for 1922 were not much above those for 1905-.
In Sweden the increase from 1915 to 1920 was slight but
from 1920 to 1929 the yearly increase was 3.9%. In
10 For increase in the output per head see R .. port of the Ccmmittee
on Recent Economic Changes of the President's Conference on Unemployment,
vol. II, p. 452 in The Social Aspects of Rationalization
(Geneva 1931), pp. 79-81.
In regard to unemployment as caused by rationnalization
see Problemes; etc., p. 269; The Course and Phase of the World
Economic Depression, pp. 66-77.