Ralph George Hawtrey Quotes

6 Sourced Quotes

If each member of society can be induced or impelled to do his allotted task by associating it with some motive that appears to him adequate, then he need never know how he is contributing to the real end, and need not even be aware of the end at all. It is this problem of organization that we shall call the Economic Problem. It is in fact the real subject matter of political economy.

Ralph George Hawtrey
Indeed it would have been a mean-spirited course to go back on the century-old standard on account of so trifling a premium on gold, a premium which, as it turned out, the action of the market wiped out in a few months, before any of the provisions of the Act of 1819 had come into operation.

Ralph George Hawtrey
Once the gold standard was suspended, there could be no doubt of the purpose of that step. In face of the exchange risk the high rate could not possibly attract foreign money. It could only be intended as a safeguard against inflation. Fantastic fears of inflation were expressed. That was to cry, Fire, Fire, in Noah's Flood. It is after depression and unemployment have subsided that inflation becomes dangerous.

Ralph George Hawtrey
Economic theory, in every branch, deals with practical affairs. Its subject is human welfare, and it is never entirely dissociated from the practical question of how human welfare is to be promoted. But it is a special characteristic of the art of central banking that it deals specifically with the task of an authority directly entrusted with the promotion of human welfare. Human welfare, human motives, human behaviour supply material so baffling and elusive that many people are sceptical of the possibility of building a scientific edifice on so shifting a foundation. But however complex the material, and however imperfect the data, there is always an advantage to be gained from systematic thought.

Ralph George Hawtrey
To unstable money are to be traced nearly all our economic troubles since 1918: the unemployment of the inter-war period; the over-employment and scarcity of labour since the Second World War; the labour unrest incidental to perpetual wage demands; the hardships and dislocation caused by the declining value of small savings, annuities and endowments; the vexation of continual price rises even for those whose incomes on the whole keep pace with them; the collapse of the prices of Government securities through distrust of the unit in which they are valued.

Ralph George Hawtrey
Man is a rational animal, and if human affairs are hard to regulate, his twofold nature is usually the cause. Reason is something ultimate; it would be the same in another planet, or in another universe, as it is here. Animal nature is something contingent; it might have been different. Our life is a compromise, a blend between the animal and the rational.

Ralph George Hawtrey