East and West Fight for Trade Of the Orient

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 691, 17 June 1929, Page 13

East and West Fight for Trade Of the Orient

Japan, China, and India’s Low Labour Costs MAN VERSUS MACHINES Sooner or later, and sooner than later, there is going to he a stiff fight for trade between the East and AA'est, tlie AVest for Eastern markets, and the East for its own markets, says the special correspondent of the San Franciso “Chronicle.” Japan, China and India are going to compete with Great Britain, and United States and other AVestern industrial units in an endeavour to secure the tremendous trade that the hundreds of millions of peoples in the East potentially represent. MAN VERSUS MACHINE I Up to a comparatively recent date these Eastern countries have, in the main, been content to accept the goods brought to them from the West and to pay for them in the usual way by export of Eastern products. But latterly a change has been taking place. The Eastern nations have been applying the lessons that their travelled young men have learned and are beginning to manufacture for themselves. Nothing can prevent their continuing to do so with increasing success, unless AVestern industrial units can maintain their position by meeting them on their own ground. The Eastern world has two enormous advantages over the Western world in the matter of industry. It has an unlimited supply of cheap labour even in Japan the average working man’s daily wages is about 60 cents gold—and is not handicapped as is the AVest by hours of labour. The East opposes these advantages to those that the AA'est still holds in its much greater knowledge of how to use machinery and science in industry. In other words, it is a case of man versus machine, for that is the kernel of the problem of AVestern industry in Eastern lands. EAST SUSPICIOUS It seems as though those concerned in the East do not fully appreciate this, but there are indications that they are beginning to do so. Leaving out the AVestern-trained theorists, the majority of Eastern industrialists are in no real sense attraced by the marked whittling down of labour effort that is a characteristic of Western industry. The East, while it has no desire to turn work into slavery, is willing to work far longer hours and under less comfortable conditions than is the West, and a suspicion is arising—Japan has given vent to this more than once—that the j attempts made by Occidental trade unions to get the East to fall into line as regards hours, conditions, etc., are actuated entirely by a desire to handicap Eastern output in order to leave room for AVestern output. To put it in another way, the movement for factory and industrial reform is regarded as an attempt on the part of those who hold the advantage of better machinery and scientific I knowledge to neutralise the advantage |of cheap and willing labour. That j suspicion has not spread very much ias yet. but it exists and if spread j will materially affect the relationship of Eastern and Western industry in the struggle that is coming for the Eastern trade and Eastern markets. WEST MUST REDUCE COSTS At present Eastern countries, j through their officials and government I and industrial departments, are wel- j coming the movement for industrial { reform and are subscribing to the j principles of shorter hours and easier j conditions, but it is a fact that a good j deal of this agreement is little more | than lip service. Japan has not yet i abolished night work for women and | children, although she is the most ad- j vanced of Eastern industrial coun- j ! tries. In China the old hours of labour j I obtain and are cheerfully accepted, I j while in India long hours are the rule 1 | rather than the exception, i Until the East can command a tech- j j nical and scientific knowledge in in- i I dustry comparable to that which has ! j been built up in the AA r est by long years of experience, it would be suici- ! dal for the East to throw away the \ enormous advantage she holds in all that is connoted by the term “cheap j labour,” and this industrialists in Eastern countries, whether native or j foreign, fully realise. And inasmuch as it is idle to expect any reversal of | the policy' of shorter hours and less : work in the A\ r est, it is plain that if j the West is to maintain its ground in : Eastern markets it will have to offset the advantage that the East has in its | cheap labour by increased and better : employment of machine production. The real policy the West will have ; to adopt will be reduction of costs, and Western manufacturers will have ito do their utmost to reduce their production costs to the lowest possible ; I level if they are to win in the race '• I for the enormous potential trade re- [ | presented by an East that is daily be- \ j coming more and more awake. |