The Dominion. MONDAY, MARCH 22, 1920. OUTPUT AND WAGES

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 151, 22 March 1920, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, MARCH 22, 1920. OUTPUT AND WAGES

Tiie inflation of the currency, the accumulation of fortunes by suppliers of commodities needed for the purposes of the war, and the general inequality of financial sacrifice since August. 1914, have tended largely to obscure the essential facts of the economic, situation facing the world to-day. ' Four years of warfare, in which the major part of the energy of Europe, and in a less 'degree of America, has been devoted to the purposes of destruction, have re-» suited in an appalling scarcity of commodities and wastage of the plant necessary for their production. Instead of concentrating on overtaking this shortage of goods, wo all tend to devote ourselves to obtaining larger individual shares of the abundant supply of paper money in circulation. A currency that daily becomcs convertible into goods on less and less favourable terms does not represent- wealth, and its distribution even on the most ideal conditions would be in itself no remedy for our present evils. It is commodities in plentiful supply that we require for our material well-being, and the most urgent need of industry is to remove all obstacles to the common recognition by all sides of imperative necessity. Hig>;! wages lor a lessened output is: general demand to-day. It is one that can. only send prices and wages round and round in a v.icious circle. If the goods are not there we cannot have them. If waterside workers, by limiting the amount of cargo they handle a day, hold up shipping in port unnecessarily, it is obvious that the ships will make fewer voyages per annum, and there will he less goods and dearer goods from overseas available in New Zealand. If we hew less coal we cannot have the goods which would have been manufactured with an ample supply. If we reduce the working day in all the multitude of industries in which-shorter hours are sought, we shall have to go without all the things that might'have been produced in the time cut off. And we will have to pay more for the goods we do get. The workers .in each industry look at the problem only from their individual point of view of making as good a bargain for themselves as possible. This is natural, but- the inevitable end of a general policy of higher wages for •ess work must be that the higher wages become worth less than tb" old—the workers arc worse, not better, off. A brief cablo message this morning indicates a remarkable change over in British Labour opinion on the relation of wages to output. It is announced that a congress representing 1,300,000 trades unionists has approved the principle of payment by results, with adequate safeguards. The total number of trades unionists in Britain is about five millions, and the congress adopting this principle is thus representative <if about a quarter of the strength of the movement. As Messhs. O'Grady, J. R. Clynes, and Wm, Thorne are mentioned a. l ? having been present, and all are leaders in the National Federation of General Workers, that organisation may be taken as originating the movement. Piece-work, the most- common method of payment by results, is variously regarded in the industries of Britain. Some employers and unions insist on it; .others refuse to have anything to do with it. So far as any general trend of opinion can be detected, it has seemed to be increasingly hostile to it. This is partly due to the impolitic attitude of some employers in 'the past 'in cutting rates at the moment when the employees, by increased efforts, had increased their rewards. Payment by results is Nature's method oj: reward—"as ye sow so shall ye reap." A healthy man is natural)y inclined to do the best work be can, and has a sturdy scorn for the incompetent and idle, and objects to seeing them receive for indifferent work the sanie reward as himself. In some industries individual payment by results is impossible, but in all there is room for it on a- collective basis. In the leading English reviews it is common nowadays, for instance, to find; articles urging that all industrial) corporations should increase their capital and put the extra shares into a trust for the employees,, among whom the profits are distributed as an addition to their wages. Whatever form we may give the principle of payment by results, it must come. If industry is to.be rehabilitated it can only be by both sides pulling together through the establishment, of a community of interest that the present wage system is signally failing to givq.