The Guardian AND EVENING STAR, With which is incorporated ” The West Coast Times.” WEDNESDAY, 15th. JUNE, 1921. INDUSTRY AT HOME.

Hokitika Guardian, 15 June 1921, Page 2

The Guardian AND EVENING STAR, With which is incorporated ” The West Coast Times.” WEDNESDAY, 15th. JUNE, 1921. INDUSTRY AT HOME.

“In my opinion the industrial position at Home could not he worse,” said Mr Robert J. Harvey, of Stafford, England, who is on health visit to New Zealand. Hr Harvey has been connected with the pottery trade for many years and has travelled extensively throughout England and Scotland and as a fairly large employer of labour has an intimate knowledge of general labour conditions. Of course the coal miners’ strike has precipitated the trouble,'’ said Mr Ha rvey to a Wellington interviewer, “but in my opinion there was trouble ahead, even if the miners had not acted as they have done. Many important industries were languishing for lack of capital and customers, and there was bound to be a slump In my own business we have had a most anxious trine, and it is partly due to the constant worry and mental strain that I have come to New Zealand (■ seek a renewal of health, which after all is the most precious oossession. And it is given to all of us without charge,” lie added reflectively. “We have been living in an artificial world so long,"

Mr Harvey continued, “that some people began to delude themselves that it waygoing to last for ever. Of course this could not he, and when the end came it caught many people napping. I remember a Lincolnshire man who lias a large engineering business who said to me just before my departure ‘Well, I’ve handled thousands where liefore I had hundreds, and yet now I’ve got nought.’ He was really surprised, and his experience is only similar to that of hundreds of others, who have

handled thousands and now have little left. It isn’t, because they were extravagant. Prices of everything have soared, and now the slump has come and wo find that generally the nation and the people who form the nation are much poorer. There is considerable unemployment at Home,” said Mr Harvey, “I suppose there must be well over two million people in this unhappy position, and the outlook is not at all bright. The strike of the miners was in my opinion, the culminating point—it cannot do anything else but intensify the evil, increase unemployment, and make the people still more wretched. We hear a lot of talk in the House of Commons about increased production, but everything is against us America at the present time has England in her grip, and when we turn to the Continental coy rib'if? w f) find them In n worse condition slutn we m, euk! with on exchange, that mu ft iwim their

financial and political beads to wonder what the future has in store. “I don't want your readers to think that 1 am unduly pessimistic,” continued Mr Halv'd, “but" as an employer of labour with an intimate knowledge of the commercial world of to-day, T know that these industrial upheavals are only perpetuating the evil tyul increasing the difficulties. Labour lenders can talk as they like and boast of the efforts they are making to free the world of industrial slavery, but they are doing nr harm to the deluded workers than the most unscrupulous and soulless employer has ever done. They are wrecking industries causing valuable plants to be destroyed and putting the whole world hack. There seems to he no attempt at conciliation—in this respect ■1 blame the employers as much as the employees—and lam satisfied that while this feeling of antagonism exists the road to industrial peace will remain closed. “It is a pity,” concluded Mr Harvey, “ a great pity indeed I know in my business the outlook is not very promising ; \he future is more uncertain than it has boon for many years Many industries will receive their death blow owing to the coal shortage, and it will take years before normal conditions obtain. The outlook for the worker at Home is not promising, and I don’t wonder at the rush'to New Zealand.”