ABSTRACT
Berens viewed Lloyd George’s budget as a step in the right direction for addressing unemployment. He states as fact that unemployment always exists, in good times and in bad, as part of the modern industrial economy and laments the ever-present sight of unemployed able-bodied men who were willing to work. Berens argues that the causes to which unemployment had been attributed – free trade, overpopulation, overproduction, and machinery – cannot be pinpointed as the reason for so many men being out of work. The only permanent solution to unemployment, Berens insists, is to bring the industrial population back to the land. The Liberal budget, by proposing taxes on the land and the reduction of the taxes on industrial production, would encourage the holders of land to make use of it by employing labourers rather than allowing it to lie empty.
