Copland, at Godkin Lecture, Proposes Program for Full Postwar Employment

Suggesting an attitude of cautious optimism, Douglas B. Copland, Dean of the School of Commerce at the University of Melbourne and economic consultant to the Australian Government, concluded the annual Godkin Lectures at Littauer Lounge last week with a comprehensive program for full employment in the postwar world.

The Australian economist gave an empirical approach to the problems of "Administrative Controls in a Free Economy" during his four lectures here. Demonstrating the complete failure of unregulated private enterprise to provide equilibrium, Copland advocated a series of government controls.

Anticipating the American objection that such regulation will increase the national debt, Copland stated, "In this country there is a tendency to over-emphasize the role of the national debt and underemphasize that of national wealth. A man will treat a newly-floated stock as an asset, but considers a government bond a debit, even if he owns the damned thing!"

In his second lecture, "The Role of Private enterprise," Copland contended that the pre-war economy failed to operate in the best interests of the community at large, that it could not avoid depressions, and that it will not employ all available factors in the long run.

--Because of these failures, he stated, it will be necessary for the community to step in after the war and secure a rising standard of living with more equitable distribution of the nation's produce, within the limits of a society largely free.

In order that government stabilize the economy and insure a certain measure of security for all, he continued, it will be necessary for the nation as a whole to build various community goods: hospitals, schools, roads, bridges, and dams.

All the projects proposed will, he went on, increase the wealth of the community; and as long as the nation has an expanding economy, an increase in the national debt will not represent a burden on the people. And an economy which stagnates, he concluded, will die.

"The public debt of Australia is relatively much greater than that of the United States. And we are not worried." Australia, Copland argued, had set up the machinery necessary to regulate national expenditure, distribute national spending power, destroy the restrictive practices of monopoly, and insure sufficient mobility of the factors of production.