BRITISH TRADE SLUMP

Hokitika Guardian, 29 April 1925, Page 3

BRITISH TRADE SLUMP

WORK A. LOST’ ART. THE CURSE OK THE DOLE. IUSTII AI.I.VN AND N.Z. CAULK ASSOCIATION \Ueceivea this day at 9.4. • a.in.) SYItNEA', April 29. Albert, Spencer, President of the Auckland 'Provincial Employers’ Association, Jia.s arrived in Sydney, on route to New Zealand, alter a world tour. He says that trade in England is being strangled by foreign conuetitiun. aided |,v the Government dole. Important oid established industries are failing and foreign countries with low wages and freedom from strikes are capturing the world's trade. The cotnj otiiii n from which the British manufacturers are suffering is so tierce that they have found themselves engaged in a Impels-, light. Once the Staffordshire potteries were able to compete against all foreign manufacturers, but to-day these famous works are languishing because of the invasion of the British market by Czetho-Slovakia, whose manufacturers a .rc la,tiding cups ami saucers in Britain and retailing them at 4s 9d per dozen, while the lowest price- at which the British manufacturers could sell them was eight shillings per dozen. Air Spencer said the wholesale and other industries were in a similar position.

Since the settlement of the Ruhr difficulty. said Air Sfo-ncer, Germany and France have been underselling the British mine-owner by five shillings per ten. The result was that there were a hundred thousand miners unemployed in the United Kingdom. Holland had captured the market for electrical goods. When industrial troubles arose over n reduction in wages and longer hours the Dutch employers shut down their works and the workmen accepted the half loaf as better than no bread. Conditions in England had readied such a desperate stage that the British manufacturers were being cum', oiled testablish works and factories in other European countries. An English Company in Spain landed slates in England at, -12 10s per thousand, whereas come home manufacturers had to sell at £i

Referring to the wool trade, AH Spencer expressed the opinion that the enormous prices wool was fetching could not he maintained. A new tabnc was - Peine manufactured in England. S am and Italy, one cf its constituents being wood pulp, the other essential elements being wool and cotton. Its volume <> manufacture was increasing rapidly and the effect of the substitution of cotton and wood pulp in the material must, in time, operate against the prevailing hicdi price of wool. The manufacturing industries generally Ttalv were in a flourishing condition owing to her ability to under pell Britain and successfully compete in other countries, ft seemed that the British on the dole system had lost the art- of working.