WHERE BRITAIN MAY GAIN.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2420, 27 March 1915, Page 17

WHERE BRITAIN MAY GAIN.

The valuable addresses' of Mr. iW. G. Wickham, the British Trade Commissioner, do not always receive,; the publicity they deserve. Everyone interested- in forwarding the cause of British trade will find matter worthy 'of attention in the following address delivered by Mr. IWickham in I'wercargill last month:— . . . :

"The subject of British'trade-is one Which is at' the present ' time of very much greater interest- to.- us- all than it has been in the past. Very few people nave time or the. interest ;to study it in its wider aspects. And unless one can look at a question so. to speak.from e, distance, even the small: part, of it .with which one is very familiar gets out of perspective. Nowadays we see people Studying map's probably for the' first .time since childhood, and probiibly also with very much greater diligence and interest than they did then. -The laws of banking and foreign exchanges, which .we used—with political economy and the ■ laws of Nature—to takefor .granted, and leave on one side as matters that could well look after themselves, have suddenly become subjects of vital interest to every business man. For years ,we have been buying goods.from all over the world, accepting what .was put before us, asking few questions, unless, perhaps, whether there was not something cheaper. A few people, troubled to. ascertain where their purchase came from; but they very rarely."went .further and studied the reasons wii}\When they • found that they couljl not get certain things from .the Old Country they usually adopted the very simple general explanation that England wa6 esleep, and that it was hopeless to'expect anything. I Lave been in New Zealand now for three years, and I liave ibardly met anyone who attempted to go beyond this as an explanation of the large imports of American and German goods. Tho fact that Great Britain's exports of manufactured goods were considerably greater than those of Germany, and vastly larger than those of lAmerica—for, if you deduct cotton, oil, teroin, lumber, and raw metals from America's exports., it is surprising how .email the balance is—did .not seem to call for comment. ... The fact that British exports had increased by nearly 100 millions sterling in the last four years Was ignored. I called attention only jffie. other day to the fact that for the first six months of 1914, a year of clump after four years of boom, our (exports fell off by £2,000,000 from the previous record,, while those of America declined by £26,000,000. Added to these proofs of expansion on a solid foundation is the fact usually overlooked that' more than half our. exports are to foreign countries, less than half going !to; the Dominions and India, and that, With the exception of India, where duties are nominal,, they go into all countries in spite of high protective duties. "These are elementary facts, but thoy iare quite sufficient io prove that sleepiness and indolence are not an adequate explanation of the comparative success jnf America and Germany; "British trade is built up on quality land good value for money. If you look all over the world and study trade jßtatistics of each country yoil will find ihat it is in the very poor countries

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TRADE COMMISSIONER'S REVIEW.

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that British goods have' least sale. In prosperous countries, however high the tariff barrier, the highest grade goods from England iind a ready sale. The higher the American tariff goes the more inevitably do British goods have to be of the best quality to get in, and the more certainly do the high grade goods get'in.

"I put this before you ' by way of preface. • These were facts before the war began. I returned here when wo had been at war for a month,-and when wo were beginning to know a little, about the first effects of war on trade. Three Questions In Particular. were constantly put to me: t "1. Is England going to capture all Germany's foreign trade? , "2. Is England going to wake up and manufacture what we want? "3. Will England be able to retain after the war the new trade she now gets? • "Probably questions of this kind have occurred to many of you, Possibly you have discussed them at length, and made up your minds as to the answers. Nevertheless, I propose to give you a few suggestions for your consideration; And as I. do not wish , to seem to lay down the law to those who have had a great deal more practical experience of business problems, I would say, first, that I have had at least sufficient practical experience of business, in London and in the East to avoid the bommon fault of economists and to keep my head out of the clouds; while 1 have also, perhaps, had more opportunity than many of studying business in ail its aspects, finance, manufacture, iinporting; and exporting. 1 "Taking the first question, ' then —is England going to capture all Germany's foreign trade?—l have no hesitation in giving a reply in the negative. Of the goods which Germany has been exporting on a large scale there are roughly three classes: There are, in the first place, those which might equally well be made in England, and which quite probably we shall take up seriously., provided we find it necessary to make a start, and the. obstacles such as absence of skilled labour are not insuperable. Dyes, for instance,' we are going to make. Wo have the raw material in coal tar, and we.need the dyes for our huge textile industries. The- old patent laws protected the Germans for 34 years, while they, built up huge businesses. In the course of manufacturing they made' further discoveries which they patented, and they devised economies in manufacture. Without, the assistance of Government, itdoubtful whether the new industry could,' after the.war, face the competition of the enormously pow- ' erful German firms. There are many other industries where it will depend entirely on the labour question. You may not realise here the extent to which . Efficient and Economioal Production depends on a kind of labour whidi in New Zealand would be useless. Every minute process is specialised," and the . worker is in a sense rendered unfit for any offier work by concentrating his

faculties and manual skill oil only one thing. This may be bad, but without this system no works can hold its own in tiio world race., Consequently it is impossible to say as yet which of those industries will or will not be established in England. "The second class of industry is that in which Germany has natural advantages,. such as raw material which we have not got. For instance, 1 understand that for certain fireproof glass ;v& have not the material in England. _ Any country's output of basic slag is limited. It is, as you know, a refuse by-product from oiie process of steel makiin'.. Phosphorus has to be taken out, but 116 one will go and look for ores with a high percentage of phosphorus just for the pleasure of taking it out. The output of slag of any country is therefore limited by the nature of the iron ore which they are workirig on. Similarly Germany has built up a variety of chemical industries _on the natural potash found as. a mineral nowhere but in Germany. In such cases we . have simply to accept Nature's limitations. "Then we come to the third group. ! Of the two already mentioned, the latter we cannot hope to take permanently from Germany, while the first-named I tope we may. The third group, on the other, hand, -1 sincerely hope we may not. This group is that of cheap imitations. To some extent Japan has taken Germany on at her own game and. beaten her, and it is instructive to see the goal to which the race of 'price-and-quality-eutting' leads. 1 deliberately put this last, because it brings us back to the question of quality as the fundamental fact in British industry. I will give you two statements 011 this subject each of' which will, I 'think, stand close scrutiny. Germany imitates in reduced quality, but the Britisher

Only Imitates In Order to Improve. Ha may be slow in taking up a thing, but when .lie does, he improves both design and workmanship. And I would say here that people often- talk quite erroneously of the trade; Genhany and America have taken.from us. As a matter of fact, .you will find it hard to give instances. If you put, it that they have built up big new industries while we went on doing a big trade in other things,- then I agree. There was no typewriter or cash register .industry until America introduced them, and there was' lio aniline dye industry until Germany took up the invention of a Britisher who couldn't' get capital to back him in England. The making of cotton hosiery was established first in Germany, but the woollen, hosiery .industry has all the time been so busy in-England that it had no time to notice the competition of this cheap imitation, But these are not trades that we have lost. "The second statement I Said I would give you is this: Of the leading manufacturing countries Germany is the most, and America the least, willing to adapt EGods to a particular customer's wishes. It is said so often that Americans will and British firms will not make exactly what is wanted that many people accept it as a fact without examination. America does not because she cannot possibly afford to. American goods sell because they are cheap, and they are. only cheap because they are turned out in huge quantities of one pattern. The Britisher is slow to take up new ideas, needs to be 'convinced that an alteration is an improvement, and that it will pay to execute it. The German will make anything asked for, and trust to luck to sell enough to make it pay. Now, what the German manufacturer has agreed to do in a very great number of cases, and the British manufacturer has refused to do, is to make something similar but cheaper; and the result has been a continual. undercutting in price and fall in 'quality. Now everyone knows that if a manufacturer, once starts making a

second quality, or reducing the quality of his original make he loses his claim to reliability. Sooner or later lie is found out, and the goodwill of his name and trade mark is gone. And yet not only is tho British manufacturer perpetually asked to do this, but he is called a fool if lie refuses. So far has this Gutting Down of Quality gone that in some lines it is almost impossible to find good quality makes 011 tho market. Window glass like the distorting mirrors in the side-shows is iii practically every house. Door and window furniture which does not fall to pieces iii a few weeks is almost unprocurable. Cardboard dressed up as leather, wood pulp called artiticial silk, cotton mercerised or fluffed and sold as silk, wool or linen, vegetable fibres instead of bristles, these are just a few of the rubbishy substitutes that we have come down to. Many merchants honestly, regret being forced by competition to sell these bad value goods, but they all plead that there is 110 alternative. To show you how far this has gone, I will give you an instance. A short while ago an Order-in-Council prohibited the importation of saucepans and similar, utensils lined with lead or any alloy of lead.' Perhaps you do not know 'the early history of this. Cast-iron hollow-ware coated with pure tin was an old-established British industry. Tin being at least six times as OKPensive as lead, Germany substituted the latter, and got into the trade. If the public or the doctors had been told, there would havo been no sale for this fraud, and there would not have been so many inexplicable cases of 'ptomaine' poisoning, v Tho trade did not tell the public, but went on maintaining the old names of 'tinned and ' bright-tinned,' justifying themselves by saying that the public would have the cheapest goods. Of course, it is ridiculous to suggest that the pubjic would have bought a dose of lead-pois-oning deliberately to save 2d. or 3d. Nevertheless, about'9o percent, of'tho tinned saucepans and frying-pans, until recently,, contained-practically no tin. Now it has been suggested that British trade would be benefited by an eihibition of goods all over the Dominion. One serious drawback is this. One of the first principles of cheap German imitations is,to retain, if not improve upon, The Outward Appearance. The only possible way of pushing the German goods out is to test them side by side with 13ritish', or to induce those who, sell them to explaiu the merits of the latter. Unless this .was done, a mere exhibition of British goods would be useless. It would be exceedingly difficult; if not impossible, to get competent showmen to do this for exhibitions all over the country. Manufacturers' agents'are doing it every day, but they could not spare time. At the same time, I feel myself very strongly that much more could be done both by the wholesale 'and the retail trade, especially' the latter, in talking quality. Over and over again in New Zealand I have been' offered cheap rubbish first, and have had to ask for better quality. I was reminded of the Bible story of the guest who was surprised at being given -the best wine last. I have been told that it is a maxim of good salesmanship to send customers away having either bought the best goods or at least regretting that they cannot afford the best. :It has _ been suggested to me.that the best justification for preferential duties is that, far from being a tax 011 -the public, they are an inducement to economy in that they tend to force people to' buy better and more durable goods which are better value.

"To sum up: There has in the past I think been insufficient study of economic and industrial conditions. This has led to unbalanced criticism of manufacturers at Home, and to some extent it is leading to

Exaggerated Expectations

I have already heard unpleasantly scornful denunciations of British attempts to reproduce curtain Herman trash. Allowance lias to be made for varying conditions, for the presence or absence of raw material, for the particular nature of the skill and temperament of the workers, for the sanguine or cautious mental outlook of the capitalists and employers of each nation. By these each nation is limited. "Certain goods which Germany has n p ior . J' ou cou ld equally be made ii. England il we have tijne to train skilled labour. And let- me here implore you to realise that skilled labour is not to be found for the asking. Some people here think it sound policy to build up industries by taking skilled labour from England, not realising that we cannot spare it and that they are taking the lite-blood of our industries. If you want industries you must breed aiid tram your own labour suited to tho work they are to do just as other countries have done.

Certain other classes of goods it is useless to expect England to make: and a third class of goods I hope you will give up asking England to make. New Zealand people are prosperous and they should be the last people to be satisfied with cheap trash. If British goods ar ® designed, badly finished, unsuitable to your requirements, do not buy them. But there are endless numbers of things which you do not buy merely because they are good quality, and therefore cost a little more. Importers lay the' whole blame on the public, but I ask them franklv whether they really buy as they might to guide the public by showing higH-class goods and explaining wherein lies their value.. My own view is that more good can bo done to British trade by importers and retailers pushing goods 011 quality instead of 011 cheapness than m any other way.