Why America is Prosperous

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 100, 19 July 1927, Page 8

Why America is Prosperous

SECRETS OF PRODUCTION

INDUSTRIAL OBSERVATIONS

“The American workman does not work hard. That is not the secret of American prosperity. He is not as good a workman as the average Australian artisan.” FRESH from his tour of observatio in North America as one of Auf tralia's industrial investigators, u! E. J. Gravndler, general secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union* rived from Vancouver by the nui yesterday.

T can say that the crux of Ameri can success in industry is due to agement, the organisation and super' vision of labour and the very latest word in machinery.”

On the last factor Mr. Gravndi er laid great stress. The workers' were not better nor even as good as the average Australian. But industrialists worked on the principle of scrapping any machine, even though it cost £IO.OOO, if they could effect a saving of labour or a speeding-up o' production. “That was the answer I had from every industry I investigated.”

AMERICANS DON’T WORK HARD “Piecework has nothing to do with the marvellous production, because industries working on the time wages system were equally productive.” Mr. Grayndler demolished the fable that the Americans work hard. It was the monotony that killed. For nine hours a day in the motor industry they go on doing the same task. Some at last went mad.

The energy devoted to industrial research in each business astonished Mr. Grayndler. Each employer maintained a department continuously engaged in the investigation of problems cropping up in his factory.

Some of the manufacturers were making a great success of the introduction of music into the workrooms. It improved morale and stimulated production remarkably. Time-purchase systems in America, Mr. Grayndler did not consider an evil. It aided production through consumption. Its result in high wages had been recognised as the salvation of the States.

Mr. Grayndler admitted that these judgments were based on a rising trend in wages. There might be a dangerous degree of time-purchasing about the American homes, but he did not anticipate a decline in American wage rates. WORKERS’ ORGANISATION Speaking of trade unionism in the United States, Mr. Grayndler stated that it was in a very much better condition than he had been led to believe. It was well organised in all the key industries. The American Federation of Labour was a very strong organisation and its leaders were men who were fit for office in any Cabinet in the world. Mr. Grayndler met all the biggest men in the Labour movement. One big building which came under Mr. Grayndler’s notice typified American methods. It was a fine building. But it had been up 25 years and the owners wanted to go in for the latest machinery and thought they might as well have the latest in buildings, too. So they paid the contractor to pull the whole place down and cart it away—where, they neither knew nor cared, for they gave the whole of the valuable steelwork and materials to him. Mr. Grayndler left other members of the mission in Schenectady and went to Canada. He did not think industry was so Americanised there. Production was on a scale more comparable with Australian and New Zealand conditions.