ABSTRACT
The world at the present day is suffering from two misfortunes: there are people who desire goods which they cannot purchase, and there are people who have goods which they cannot sell. Those who have goods which they cannot sell are adopting various ingenious means of disposing of their surplus. It would be demoralising to wage earners to pay wages for work not done; therefore they continue to produce the goods that they cannot sell but adopt various means of destroying them after they have been produced. Brazil, which suffers from a surplus of coffee, has taken to using it as fuel on the railways and to burning it on large funeral pyres in lonely valleys. There is a glut of rubber, which is unfortunately made worse by the fact that the natives cannot be restrained from tapping the rubber trees. Fortunately rubber trees are subject to a pest, which has hitherto been combated but which is now about to be encouraged. The world’s cotton crop has, in the past, been threatened by the boll weevil, but now the boll weevil is welcomed as a friend, since it helps to prevent overproduction of cotton.
