Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 1920. BRITISH INDUSTRIAL SITUATION.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 April 1920, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 1920. BRITISH INDUSTRIAL SITUATION.

We all would sometimes like “to see ourselves as others see us/’ and most of tis are interested in the observations of foieign visitors on the condition and progress of our country. Much of interest and value is contained in an address recently delivered by a Special Trade Commissioner of the United States (Mr B. S'. Cutler), before the American Manufacturers’ Export Association at Chicago on the financial and industrial conditions in Northern Europe, including in particular the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, and Germany. There are, he says, four main elements in the European industrial situation—labour, mechanical facilities, raw materials and finance. The relations between labour and industry in the United Kingdom, in the opinion of the Trade Commissioner, are being revolutionized. But English labour is only demanding now what it wanted before the war. For many years it has been organised to obtain that to which it aspires as soon as political and economic conditions became favourable. The formulated demands of labour include higher wages, housing improvements, shorter hours, a voice in the making of shop rules and in the fixing of the physical conditions of work, and joint control in general management. The last, Mr Cutler says, is believed to be tile paramount issue in the view of labour leaders, and there is little doubt about the truth of this when one realises that the English workman considers his job to be his own personal property. No one denies the necessity of better housing and better shop conditions from the standpoint of sanitation. Many manufacturing p.operEs are the antithesis of what the best ’nerican factory owners call “decent’’, rrh’e handicaps which stanjd in the way of rapid sanitary reform also operate against reform of mechanical processes and equipment. Many factories are built compactly in the heart of a town where expansion is very costly. Another handicap to mechanical improvement is the failure to encourage inventive genius in the shops. “If a young mechanic should approach his foreman with, a new idea lie would be told to mind his own job and keep down production to the dead level of hand la

bour.” This statement may have been true a few years ago, but it is to be hoped that there is now far less justify. “Many people,” says the American Commissioner, “look upon the English labour situation ,as hopeless, in view of the physical condition and lack of esprit de corps of the average factory worker. On the contrary,” says he, “I am confident, of his regeneration. He and his employer are together working out a new industrial relationship, a new type of joint responsibility n,s between men. of the same race, the same nature, and a thousand- years of common history. They are homogeneous and they seem to understand each other at bottom. In truth, I expect to see come out of old England a new plan of industrial co-operation that will rank with the Magna Cliarta and like instruments of human advancement. And it may be all tile more sound for the unconscionably long time which those Britishers take to do it.” On the necessity' of American co-operation in restoring 'Europe, the creditor countries cannot expect to sell their own goods to the debtor European countries, un-

less the latter can produce their own goods for purposes of exchange j and European goods will not be forthcoming until materials are supnlied from the creditor countries. Tliero is here presented a deadlock which can only he broken by credits—credits chiefly from the New World and from Great Britain, which Empire controls a large part of the indutsrial necessities essential to the basic industries of the world, llici United States, therefore, can do no business of consequence for a while

iii Europe unless it extends vast credits For food and materials. There are a lumber of far-seeing American finan-

(Oers who advocate such credits from the United States only on condition that iGiroat Britain and others interested creditor countries participate in the loans.