Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 6 March 1930, Page 4

In an address given recently to the . jjondon Textile Institute, Sir .Josiah I ,mp performed a very use!ill service nv •einplia.sir.ing the fact that true rationalisation is always directed to i the reduction of costs through greater i efficiency and capital methods. There seems at the moment to be the beginning of a reaction against the process, and, as lie pointed out, if rationalization is to mean only restriction of output, mass production, moiiipolisation and trustification, then the outlook is serious. In defining the mean ing of true rationalisation, Sir .Josiah said that it did not defeat or hold up economic consequences, but, having ascertained what was in duo course inevitable, brought it about more quickly by delinite action. He showed it, in fact, as a more humane and more efficient means of carrying out that elimination of the weaker units which was effected under pure individualism by economic annihilation. If the word “rationalisation” was confused with rings and quotas and trusts and tariff walls, and if this association was to> stand in the' way of the true process, then, he said, a. new term must be found, for in foreign trade the small .scale individualistic units could no longer hold their place against larger scale individualistic units Further, modern rates oi taxation hud completely altered the distribution of the supply of capital, which had nowadays to be attracted from the small rivulets of the many, and this could no longer be done by small privately managed businesses. Since rationalisation was first hailed, some years ago, as the saviour of the post-war industrial situation, it has neon a’very hardly used word among all who write or speak of the economic position. S'uce, howqver, its real meaning has remained not a little vague in the minds of the general public, and since it has been associated with all sorts of mergers and financial arrangements that do not fall within its scope at all, it is just as well that eminent economists should from time L o time devote themselves to a little explanation and definition. True rattionalisation must continue to he carried out if British industries are to comprjte successfully in the foreign market, and it woud be calamitous if The process were retarded, or prejudiced in the eyes of the public, owing to a confused conception of its real aims and methods.