"GOING SLOW.”

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2261, 5 August 1908, Page 2

"GOING SLOW.”

A FALLING OFF IN EFFICIENCY

A SERIOUS ASPECT OF THE LABOR PROBLEM.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Employers’ Association. Mr. G. T. Booth, head of the firm of Booth and McDonald, implement makers,said strikes might he made illegal and the definition of a strike made wide enough to cover the whole ground, and aiders and abettors might be included; but that was not the end of the matter. Workmen did not- need to strike in any legal sense. They could exert all the pressure they wanted to exert on employers without doing anything of the kind. They had a plan of their own which had been well understood and worked for centrums which was perfectly effective, and would be effective, no matter what law might be in existence; and that was the plan of “going slow.” He would quote figures from tlio official statistics to show how that plan worked in New Zealand now. The figures related to a certain trade which ho would not mention, but which was by no means an unimportant part of the industrial organisation of the .Dominion. In 1901 the hands employed in the trade numbered 4176, tlie liorse-power used was 1937, the amount invested in land, buildings, and plant was £455,021, the value of material used was £495,599, paid in wages £361,150, value of total product £1,062,265, product per man £254 7s 6d. For the year 1905 the following increases hail taken place:—Hands employed 553, liorse-power 986, capita] invested in land, buildings, and plant £208,000, material used £15,000, wages paid £53,411. The increase in the output should have been £140,669 with the additional hands employed; but if there were included the increase in the amount paid in wages, in the liorse-power, and the -amount of capital invested, the increase in product should have amounted to £176,485. They would hardly believe him, lie thought, when he told them that the actual increase in the product in the year 1905 as compared with 1901 was only £15,310. The product per man fell as between 1901 and 1905 from £254 7s 6d to £224 17 3d, a falling off in efficiency of 12 per cent. But nearly the whole increase in the value of the product was accounted for by the increased amount of material used. So that the extra- labor and the extra capital invested yielded the employers of the trade the magnificent sum of £440. It was hardly too much to say that for all that expenditure of time and money, and the labor of 553 men, the country gained nothing. That happened to be a trade not so much harrassed by labor conditions as others. Nor was it a case of slackness of trade, hut rather the reverse, for that particular trade was fairly active at the time. The value of imports, however, had increased by £234,184, while the value of the local produce had increased bv onlv £15,310.

If those figures had any meaning at all, it surely was that artificial regulations applied to that particular industry had had the effect of choking it and driving the trade into the hands of foreigners. The illustration, lie believed, might be multiplied by as many industries as Miero were in the country. It was quite sufficient to show the Government were on the wrong, track in trying io oontiol industry by State regulation. By all means let there be regulations ’that would ensure the factories be. I. g sanitary, and that women and children, who were, perhaps, unable to look after thciiiselvcs, should be pro pi rly protected, but if one set to wolk to coddle adult men, even by the establishing of artificial ii'ininnim wage rates, or by any other miniis vbieli tended to decrease the incentive to exertion, it must • wontnally demoralise them and reduce their fndusmal efficiency. He was not going t 0 say that the arbitration system was solely to blame for that state ot affairs, I n’t in so far as it embodied the principle that work was not a thing that man should engage in clieert.i iy and nui> fivlly, but that it was a hateful ni.essitv upon him for li.s sins, which was not only justifiable for a man to dodge hut creditable to linn to do so; if it implied that the mantle of State sanction was to be thrown over n i;.lines*, selfishness, ami bizlucsSf—niid weakness, a Prempnri put" on : t efficiency—then,' the arbitration system was So far to blame.