AFTER THE WAR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1706, 1 May 1917, Page 4

AFTER THE WAR.

CAPITAL AND LABOUR. “Shall we be able to look forward to such peaceful relations between capital and labour after the war as will stimulate ‘both employers and workers to co-operate energetically in adopting the improvements of scientific, mechanical, and business organisation needed for effective production? No simple, confident reply can be given to this question. The affirmative answer seems to me to depend upon the successful solution of two problems, at first sight separate, but afterwards seen to be closely related. “A prime need of the economic situation for the industrial world as a whole, and for this country, will be the need of more saving—i.e., the application of a larger amount of productive energy to the making of roads, railways, ships, machinery, buildings, and the replacement everywhere of depleted stocks of materials. “If we saved 400 millions before the war, we must save at least 500 or even GOO millions afterwards. On the face of things this does not seem impracticable, or particularly difficult, on the assumption that production goes on fully and smoothly. For a strong stimulus to saving will be present in the shape of a. high rate of interest, and the distribution of wealth will apparently be favourable to the i>rocess. MORE WAGES WANTED. “The workers will not consent to return after the war to steady and pacific co-operation with capital in a new era of progressive industry, unless they arc assured wages and other conditions of employment more favourable than prevailed before the war. The experiences of war time will have convinced both the workmen who have fought and those who have stayed at home, that industry can afford a higher standard of wages. “If the nation has been able to afford the gigantic extravagances of this war, and, at the same time, to maintain the working classes at a higher level of consumption than before out of the current output of wealth (with six million men withdrawn from production), it will be idle to attempt to submit to a cut-ting-down of standards on the plea that industry cannot support higher rates. Any doubt that may exist upon this matter will be quickly removed by the Itrst attempt to impose upon any great organised trade a reduction of wage rates. “In order to raise the technique and organisation of our industry to a higher level, the workers must be got to see their own substantial gain from the enhanced productivity to which their labour is required to contribute. “The net result of this general analysis is that, if we are to escape becoming poorer after the war, we must become richer. This is not the empty truism it may at first appear. it signifies in the first place that a mere return to the standard and volume of production of wealth before the war is impossible. THE NECESSARY REVOLUTION. “Our supreme task must be to devise stimuli which, though less acute in their appeal than those supplied by the emergency of war, shall yet be adequate in peace to operate successfully in a carefullyreformed organisation of industry, in which the interest of all participants, capital, labour, ability, and the consumer shall be duly represented. If these changes in our industrial arrangements for producing and distributing wealth amount to a revolution, better this sort of ievolution than the other sort which history teaches us may follow war.”