Abstract
IN a pamphlet entitled “The Prevention of Future Economic World Crises”, Herr Robert Bosch of the Bosch Company, Stuttgart, points out that the present world-wide business depression differs radically from previous ones which were caused principally, if not exclusively, by a preceding unhealthy boom. He argues that the troubles of the present depression are not due to over-efficiency of production methods as commonly supposed but rather to the inefficiency and backwardness of nontechnical branches of the world's activities. Foreign relations are handicapped by antiquated political and mercantilist conceptions leading to armaments and tariffs while national prosperity is handicapped by wasteful and inefficient administration and distribution and by antagonism between different groups of society. It is necessary to write off superfluous plant capacity so that the remaining factories may be run efficiently. Herr Bosch visualises a reduction of the yearly working time to 1800 hours or less in place of the present 2400 hours so as to guarantee some employment at fair compensation to every worker, but he recommends that the rigid eight-hour day should be replaced by more flexible arrangements so as to provide the maximum economy in the operation of particular factories.
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Production and Employment. Nature 130, 842 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130842b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130842b0