The Dominion MONDAY, JULY 11, 1921. AN IMPROVED OUTLOOK

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 245, 11 July 1921, Page 4

The Dominion MONDAY, JULY 11, 1921. AN IMPROVED OUTLOOK

Tnc hopeful fact is mentioned in one of to-day’s cablegrams that, for tho first time in eight months, tho number of workers registered as unemployed in the United Kingdom shows a reduction on the figures of tho preceding week. The reduction is not very great. It amounts to 9172, and 2,168.727 workers are still on the unemployed register. The actual improvement, however, may be considerably greater than these figures would imply. It is likely that a number of mine workers, who were excluded from the benefits of unemployment insurance during the strike period, are now enrolled on the unemployment register—one authority is quoted today as stating that 150,000 mine workers would be displaced from the industry—and that but for tho operation of this factor the reduction in unemployment now reported would be very much greater than it is. In any case, while a proportion of the 1.200.000 men and boys employed in the British coal industry before the strike are bound to be diverted permanently into other industries, moot of them are now back at work after being idle for thirteen weeks. Solid grounds are thus afforded for a belief that the small improvement now disclosed in the general industrial situation in the United Kingdom will broaden and extend with fair rapidity. Seriously as British industries have been thrown out of their stride by the coal strike, the hope has by no means disappeared that the country may recover something like the relative place it has hitherto held in international trade. In spite of its special difficulties, the United Kingdom last year held its own very well in comparison with competitors. This is shown in British Board of Trade statistics of the trade of different countries in 1919 and 1920, which include. the following figures: —

Although the total significance of these figures is modified by the more or less unsound conditions of inflation and trade booming that obtained last year, it is a fact of some promise that during the twelve months to the end of 1920 British exports showed a greater relative increase over those of the previous year than the exports of the United States. Since the present year opened, British trade has slumped heavily in all departments—the coal strike, of bourse, seriously intensifying the slump—but the trade of tho United States also shows a considerable decline on that of last year. _ In we immediate future. Britain may find Germany a more formidable competitor in world trade than the United States. The difficulties which confront the United Kingdom are not to be ncniniised, but if further labour troubles are averted, the country may scon attain much more prosperous conditions of trade and industry than it has experienced during the last few months. .Such an improvement, of course, would react with great benefit on this Dominion and others doing the bulk of their trade with the Mother Country. In estimating the prospects of trade and industrial revival in the United Kingdom, the first great question to lie. determined is whether it is possible to re-establish tho conditions of cheap and abundant coal suppl, 5' for domestic use and export which have done so much to facilitate the expansion of British trade during the past century. As Sir Leo Chiozza Money observed recently: —

The British economic foundation is coal, and wo stand or fall by it. If tho present position continued, our export. trade would dwindle as cheaper coal from abroad robbed 11S of our markets; shipping would fail because deprived of both import and export cargoes; the entrepot [re-export] trade would vanish. The home market could not compensate us because it lives by and upon the export market. And it would not be as though the continuing cause worked as from a point of prosperity. We are actually doing fnr less trade than in 1913, while our call upon the world as expressed in oversea investments has. apart from the dubious value of the war debts, sadly diminished.

Tho first step towards rectifying this state of affairs is the re-estab-lishment of the coal industry of the United Kingdom on a self-support-ing basis and in conditions which will make British coal cheap, by world standards, and abundant. This does not mean that British minors are asked to work for unfairly low and inadequate wages, much less that they are asked, as the chairman of the British Labour Party put it in a speech reported to-day, “to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for British industry.” Financial and commercial authorities seem to be agreed that the price of coal must be further considerably reduced to permit a free revival of manufacturing and shipping industry, but the facts in sight suggest also that this reduction might be secured, without imposing any hardship on the miners. In 1913, the average output of coal per person employed in the mines of the United Kingdom was a little over a ton per day. In the latest period for which figures are available (the early part of the present year) the corresponding output was only three-quarters of a ton. Tho reduction in working hours from, 8 to 7 per day and. the wasteful over-manning of mines during the period of Government control partly account for the reduction, but “ca’ canny” or goslow tactics by the mine workers have also been a contributing factor. Even at its pre-war level and on a fair basis of comparison, ths output of coal in Britain compared badly with the corresponding output in tho United States, and while there is much to be done bv the coal owners of tho United Kingdom in reorganising the industry- with an eye to improved economy and efficiency, there is no doubt that it rests largely with the miners to increase and cheapen the output of coal, and that in doing so they would improve their own lot. Tho extent to which the miners themselves would benefit by co-operating

to raise their industry to a higher state of efficiency is suggestively indicated in official particulars of wages and profits. British Board of Trade returns show that the total pithead value of all the coal produced in, the United Kingdom between 1915 and 1920, inclusive, was £1,500,000,000. Of that gross amount there was distributed in wages between £950,000,000 and £1.000,000,000— approximately twothirds of the total. The remaining third covered not only profits and taxation, but all working costs other than wages in an industry which involves a heavy capital outlay, not only in working, but in preliminary development, much of it carried out over an extended period, during which no returns are obtained. If the British miners study their' own interests and pay some regard to the mutual obligations they share with workers in other industries, tho slight but promising indications of industrial revival reported to-day will soon broaden and expand.

IMPORTS. 1920. 1919. di JL Upited Kingdom United States 1,714,336.000 1,461,410.000 1,099,875,000 813,409,000 France 1,416,198,000 1,431,971,009 Belgium 446,621,000 208,542,000 EXPORTS. United Kingdom 1,335,569,000 798,638,000 United States 1,683,50-1, OCO 1,014,545,000 1'ranee 807,890,000 475,184,000 Belgium , 347,927,000 91,252,000