CHEAPER PRODUCTION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2271, 3 May 1921, Page 1

CHEAPER PRODUCTION.

Observing that unemployment arises because the supply of goods exceeds the immediate demand, Sir Arthur Lowes Dickinson points out that a. reduction of the supply involves further unemployment. The principal remedy is to set u lower price on commodities and to increase the demand. This can only be done by reducing costs, the main element in which is the output per person employed. Reduction in cost of production cannot be effected by the efforts of the worker alone; capital and the employer must initiate and co-operate by better organisation, by the introduction of labour-saving devices and a general increase of efficiency, so that increased production and decreased cost may be attained without- over-exertion by the workmen. The worker must reciprocate by steady work during the reorganised hours of labour without artificial, limits to individual production and by intelligent co-operation in an effort to increase the output to the maximum. It is frequently staled that there is an irreconcilable difference between employers and workmen; the one is looking for profits, and the other for wages. This is an entire fallacy. Neither profits nor a living wage are possible without efficiency. If the energy at present wasted in fruitless disputes between masters and men were wholeheartedly devoted by both parties to a determined effort to reduce costs in every way possible, we should soon see the result in higher wages, .lower prices, and a reasonable return for capital. The charts of Capital for higher returns, and the efforts of Labour for higher

wages, each largely at .the expense of the other, should he replaced by a united effort for greater efficiency and lower costs, by which both would obtain a reasonable part of v.liat they desire and the consuming public would obtain moderate prices.