Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star WEDNESDAY. MARCH 7 1917 A DISOREDITED POLICY.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 March 1917, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star WEDNESDAY. MARCH 7 1917 A DISOREDITED POLICY.

«. An English publication to hand by the last mail mentions that industrial conditionsjiprecedeut to and obligatory after the war were sharply contrasted at the lest meeting of the North-east Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders by Mr D. B. Morison, who has long been familiar with the methods pursued on the Continent, while his position in the engineering and shipbuilding world has given him a most intimate and doubtless painful knowledge of the defects of our own system—or rather lack of system. Mr Morison points to our sluggishness in profiting from experience. He does not hesitate to say that had we persisted in oar obstinacy to face facts, and there bad been no war,_ another, fwonftr voara urnnlrl hava loft

industrially—high and dry. When every other conntry recognised the advantage of co-operation in research, standardisation of product, and community of commercial interest, not a few manufacturers in his own industrial district had as a goal the ruin of each other by suicidal competition, the stronger speculating on the possibility of crashing the weaker to death, with the result that everyone emerged from the fray unnecessarily poorer, and in a more or less dilapidated financial condition, varying from the opulent magnate who paid an occasional five per cent to the impoverished competitor who had difficulty in carrying on, On the labour side there was the recognised policy of restricted effort with the deliberate object of minimising output, and so spreading a given demand over the longest possible period. Such a policy must lead to financial ruin, because it is fundamentally and economically unsound. If the policy is persisted iu we shall he hopelessly outclassed by forn’ga competition, and we know that for twenty years restriction was preached as a religion, and that to the trade unionist it had

become a first principle. That the leaders of labour have at last bad their eyes opened‘to the economic fast that high wages must be accompanied by high production, Mr Morison thoroughly believes, but he adds that unless the rank and file understand that the conditions arising out of the war demand that deliberate restriction shall give place to maximum effort, there will be before many years an unparalleled industrial chaos in this country, Mr Morison’s plea for an understanding co-operation oa the part of labour touches a very vital spct in our industrial armoury. Past experience of engineering disputes has shown how hopeless it, i- to arrive at an understanding with men who, on certain occasions, refused to he bound by

obligations e tered into by their leaders. That th 6 leaders should be convinced is therefore not enough. The fundamental facts cited by Mr Morison ought to be riveted in the minds of the rank and file by skilfully organised propaganda. What is iequired on the part of the workman is a dsw outlook. He should be shown

individually the advantages which will accrue to the nation, his employer, and himself by his personal rllegiauce to the principle of the enhanced production. ,