RESTORING BRITISH TRADE

Hokitika Guardian, 27 September 1930, Page 7

RESTORING BRITISH TRADE

(American Comment.) The greatest task facing Great Britain to-day is the recovery of her position in the world markets. It is the great staple industries of Breat Britain that are hardest hit, such a s steel, coal, cotton, iron, shipbuilding and engineering. Therefore, when it is said that, commercially, the country is out of step, it means that the problem of unemployment is by all odds the biggest problem confronting the Government. Returns compiled from trade union lists, gave an unemployment ratio ranging from 30 to 22 per cent. The unemployment index stands highest in those vital productive industries which, in the past, have been the strong pillars of British commercial prosperity, and is least in those secondary but still important callings which have to do with the maintenance of transport and public utilities, occupations known as sheltered trades because free from the external competitive struggle. It is therefore obvious that the restoration of British industry depends upon the securing of a much larger slice of foreign trade. The whole problem hinges here.

Various theories have, been advanced in explanation of British, trade suffering from a long-continued slump which is described as unprecedented in the history of the nation, and presents a problem too grave and complex to be resolved by any magical stroke. , In some quarters the whole trouble is traced to the retention of antiquated methods apd Jack of industrial organ* izatjqn upon scientific lines, Germany and the United States are quoted as conspicuous examples of rationalization and object-lessons British leaders might do well to copy. Contrawise, however, it is urged that both these countries are just n'A'v suffering from the unemployment epidemic, in spite of their adoption of the latest devices. And in this situation, some of the Britsli politicians draw the consoling inference that Great Britain shares in the general depression of world trade,' and is also likely to share in commercial recovery whenever tilings take a better turn all around. -

And this may well be.. Yet, at the present juncture, unemployment' bestrides Great Britain like a colossus, and the overseas trade returns for the past year emphasize the critical •urgency'of the problem. These statistics make hard reading. They show that during the year imports increased to the amount of 1519,963,245 dollars as compared with 1928; whilst exports increased 29,929,390. In other words the adverse balance between imports and exports reached a hundred million dollars, which raises the total adverse balance 152,791,280 higher than it was a year ago. On the other hand, coal exports have increased to the value of 48,000,000 dollars, and, compared with 1927, tho year’s totals are more satisfactory; for it is shown that exports have risen considerably more than a hundred million dollars and imports seventeen million. It is evident from these returns that the past year has been a period of severe setback for British overseas trade, all but in tlm capital industry of coal. This business has been on the mend for six mouths and forty thousand more miners are at work than were a year ago. Moreover, the cut-rate war between British and Polish owners has keen closured by mutual agreement. , But again in the adverse column must be placed a decline of seventeen million dollars value as regards raw cotton imports, which shows the depressed state of the Lancashire cotton industry. These are some of the factors of the problem which governs the internal and external policy of Great Britain, and considering lier exceptional dependence upon overseas trade, it is no wonder that the most pressing question before all British statesmen is how to find a way of escape. —New York Journal.