BRITISH TRADE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4855, 20 July 1925, Page 1

BRITISH TRADE.

SHEFFIELD HOPES AND FEARS. THE ECONOMIC WAR. A grim and tragic conflict, the outcome of which is of the utmost importance to every person in Great Britain, is taking place within the ? fi.ye square miles of mill and factory area which encompasses the city of Sheffield (writes Sir Percival Phillips, in the “Daily Mail’’). Few pec-ple beyond this populous district fully realise its significance. Yet the Great War, which was but the prelude to this, war for economic freedom, did not involve issues more vital to the nation than - those bound up with the fate of the industrialists ot Sheffield. Sheffield, which once supplied the Empire and the world beyond it with cutlery, fine tools, high-grade steel, railway material, and other esspirtial products of its mills and furnaces, has shrunken industrially to a pitiful shadow of its former greatness.

Yet Sheffield still survives the acid test of trade paralysis and its manufacturers are unconquered. I am assured that industry is no worse off than a year ago ; that in some respects. it shows improvement. I dis corn here and there, in the cautious utterances of its industrialists, a faint yet perceptible tinge of confidence. The feeling here seems t to be that whether the Bill be sound or not it is being put forward at the wrong time.

Industry cannot stand a further strain. It is handicapped in too many ways as it is. Plants that were tripled and quadrupled for war work are now over-large for peace time orders. The present volume of trade —as all manufacturers’ are anxious to make evident —is as great as in pre-war days, but, even tab, a large part of the topheavy machinery of production is left idle, with excessive overhead charges eating into capital.

The rates have helped to stifle industry. More than 40,000 munitions workers absorbed into the city’s population during the war remain here, many of them workless and a burden on the taxpayer. The pre-war cost of Poor Law relief was 2%d per ton of steel. By the end of 1921 it had risen nearly to 7s per ton. Today local rates cost per ton seven times' as much as in 1914.. The total expenditure for the city of Sheffield for all purposes, including Poor Law, in 1914 was £949,147 ; for 1924-25 it was £2,246,467.

Manufacturers have tried to counteract these factors wherever possible by cutting expenditure tb the bone. Salaries have been reduced right and left. The head of one firm told me. he had voluntarily reduced himself to half of his pre-war salary. This is but one example of the many sacrifices which have been made cheerfully in the effort to keep going.