Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star SATURDAY, JULY 10th. 1920. THE WEEK.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 July 1920, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star SATURDAY, JULY 10th. 1920. THE WEEK.

With the rising prices in sugar and other household commodities, as also in clothing, and material of all kinds, the high cost of living has become an ever present question. Mr Samuel Gompers, the Labor leader in the United States, has been addressing his vast audiences on the vital question, and , here is an interesting extract from one of his recent speeches. Mr Gompers proceeds : —"Only out of production can we all grow prosperous and every aid to production that docs not involve human waste is a benefit to society. If the added production is gained at the cost of a human being then it does not help society, because even from a. cold standpoint of economics it tends toward over production by destroying in the very making of the product those who .would effrectly or indirectly buy that product. Whatever are the evils in the distribution of the products of work (and there are many of them), those evils are not going to he cured by producing less. That will not solve the problem of distribution. That will provide humanity with one bone instead of two to snarl about. As I said before, T am in favour of every possible device whieli will increase the productivity of human labour and increase its standards. Tin's 's ' best done with tlio assistance of science. There can be /no objection to, really scientific management—(not the! so-called scientific management with its stop-watch methods and bonuses), that which is for the benefit of all of the parties to industry and not only of one. As an employer I should know that it would be shortsighted to expect to get steadily more from my workers and at the same time give them steadily less The better industrial engineers who are interested in improving industry and tint merely in coddling employers know this to be a fact and they regard an inequality in pay—that is. a pay which is less than the performance—as a waste of human resource, and pursue such wastes as belligerently as they pursue any other wastes. T think that scientific industrial instruction can best bo given and possibly can be given only in co-operation with the workers and with committees of. the workers so that none will have to work blindly. I am quite sure that the assurance that the improvement of methods will be for all will invite the most active, cooneration on the part of the union officers. The old ‘co’canny’ methods originated by the Scotch, the limitation of production, the idea that there is only a certain amount of work in this world to do and that it must he spread nut, thin are dead and onerht never to be revived, and will never be revived. As an emMover T should discriminate between file union organised for work and U'e organisation falselv callod a ‘union’, whieli is organised to nrevent work.”