WHAT AMERICAN INVASION IS DOING.

Gisborne Times, Volume IX, Issue 848, 24 March 1903, Page 3

WHAT AMERICAN INVASION IS DOING.

[(From Harper’s .Weekly.)

The proofs of the extent to which American manufacturers are invading the globe continue to accumulate. It is not indeed particularly surprising that we should now be sending locomotives to Guatemala and Brazil, agricultural implements to Argentina, and harvesting macluncs to France, electrical apparatus to Japan, a shoe manufacturing plant to Mexico, and milling machinery to Johannesburg. We may well open our eyes, however, when we learn that engineers from Central Asia are expected soon to reach this country for the purpose of placing contracts with American firms for cottonseed-oil mills. Strange to say, too, tile German Government is purchasing from the Philadelphia Pneumatic Tube Com-

pany pneumatic tubes for the Imperial navy-yard at Kiel ; American capitalists have started a factory in Glasgow, Scotland, for the manufacture of golf balls ; large engines for

British blast furnaces are about to be shipped by a foundry and machine company in Philadelphia. King Edward VII. has requested a Pittsburg firm to provide the charging station for his auto-mobiles at Sandringham with the electrical portion of the apparatus. It is well known that the finer qualities of women’s shoes, which used to he made exclusively in France, are now manufactured so much more skilfully in the United States that they have driven the French products out of the fashionable shops in Paris

itself. For cheap watches we used to have to go to Switzerland, but now watches can be made nowhere so cheaply as in the United States. There is scarcely any product of human industry, from a battleship to a gimlet-screw, as to which the .American inventor does not outstrip his competitors. It, is true that our warshipb cost more to build and more to run owing to the higher wages claimed by American labor. On the other hand, there is reason to believe that the ships are better.

We do not oxpect much m the way of patriotism from the British capitalist, nor have we aDy right *o expect it; but, remembering the events of the past two or three years, it is a little discouraging to find him more ready to help Russia and Germany in their financial straits than to subscribe to a colonial loan. One result

of his attitude at the present juncture will

be to turn the serious attention of many thinking people in this colony to the question of State banking.—Lyttelton Times. Bakers aro boycotting the free millers Of course they are. Did you ever hoar of a hotel licensee who refused point blank to sell the beer supplied him by tbo owner of his house? Wo expect tho bakers who were forced by the trust to raise the price of bread felt keenly for the buyers, but when the loaf rose higher and higher tho baker dare not quarrel with his bread and butter. It is unnecessary to call the bond millers hard names. Like three-fourths of their fellow men, they are out after the almighty dollar, aud mado a big bid to capture the flour industry.—Free Lance. The Free Lanco, in dealing with Mr Seddon’s speech at Hanmer, under tho title of “ Tho Policy of Go Slow,” says it. is quite possible that Mr Seddon’s underspent JE40,000 may represent savings in departmental expenditure. In that case, the public is not likely to raise any objection. At the same time, there has been rather too much of tho other kind of underspending—Parliament voting moneys for delimte objects, and Government not fulfilling the intention. It is not peculiar to this Government-, but is common to ail.

To it tho policy of “Go Slow ” might also bo applied. Votes ought not to be taken unless they am reaiiy to be spent. And, the will of Parliament ought to prevail.

As a matter of fact, it is well known that some New Zealand trade unions have forced up the price of labor to such an oxfont that New Zealand material is seut away to other countries to help to keep foreign factories going, and is brought back to our own shoros in the manu-

factured state, to compete with locallymade goods. Tho furniture trade is a case in point. Goods made in Sydney and Melbourne from New Zealand woods are offered in Auckland to-day at prices less than those at which thosamo furnituro can be made hero. "While such is the case, it cannot- be expected that employers will pay yet higher rates than they have so far submitted to. Naturally, they will import, and pocket a profit without the unpleasant necessity of battling with labor troubles. That is what the furniture trade has decided to do. And it must also happen with other industries if the arbitration and conciliation system continues to be used, not as the means of settling actual disputes, for which it was orginally designed, but as a machine for creating disputes in order to force up tho rates of wagos.—Obsorver. The scribblers of New Zealand are usin» lots of wet towels and headache powders in order to win the Premier’s £3 ' g a for a short story on the Otago, West Coast, and Thames goldfields. Mr Sed- ' don as the munificent patron of literature is n new lice.—Observer,