INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 48, 9 February 1912, Page 4

INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY.

It is only to bo expected that now the so-called upper classes have devoted the. whole- of their brain power to acquiring things, they have to get the hireling scribes to find them excuses for beating down wages ; and the Auckland 'Herald" published, a few days ago, sonic pompous nonsense on "Efficiency." When we talk of a living wage, "'the employers are beginning to voice the other side of the question, that involved in the modern workman's efficiency." One thing is certain: the British workman was never so efficient as today. How long this will last, with the enormous growth of machinery and the making of mankind merely attendants on the machine remains to be seen ; but the workmen generally never were so efficient as to-day. When the, "Herald" man says: "It is a much-debated question as to whether the efficiency purl general capability of t.iie workmen of to-day ha? incrpi-?"'! in due ratio to the enhanced return he gets for hss work," he convene lii lv forgets that the cost of living makes it untrue to say that the worker " J :" r greatly enhanced return for his work. What can we expert from a writ-" whose knowledge of economics is so small that he still thinks the employer "pays the wages?" "It is quite obvious to anyone with the most elemeii,ary knowledge of economics, that i 1" man Is going to sink his capital and his brains in any enterprise which has to be carried on under conditions which Involve a loss."

A man with more than nn elcmentarv knowledge of economies mhdit. with an effort, remember several occasions when men have sunk their eaoitnl and brains in enterprises where they said they had a loss.