A LOCK-OUT IN LANCASHIRE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 728, 30 July 1929, Page 8

A LOCK-OUT IN LANCASHIRE

THE lock-out in the Lancashire cotton mills, the vital centre of the English cotton industry, is the inevitable sequel to nine years of acute depression. Since 1919-20, when the industry enjoyed rare prosperity, stagnation has gone from bad to worse, the prices of shares have tumbled to -zero, millions of pounds in unpaid capital have been called up by desperate directorates, and frantic efforts have been made to reduce production costs. The last expedient had as its first concern the reduction of the ruling wage, and was naturally greeted with hostility by the workers. To meet advancing costs of living the rates of pay were raised after the war, hut in recognition of the depression the full “list” rate has not been paid for some time. By general consent the wage in recent years has been 12-J per cent, below list rates, and the loek-out now announced is the sequel to an effort to cut another per cent., or 25 per cent, in all, from the nominal schedule. The lot of the Lancashire millhand has never been so enviable that a substantial wage-cut can be contemplated with equanimity. A 48-hour working week, depressing surroundings and extremely tedious and often arduous work combine to make every penny paid a penny earned. When the proposed wagereduction was accompanied by a proposal to raise the workinghours to 524 a week, the opposition from the workers was redoubled. The scheme was first propounded in January, 1928, and the recommendations of the manufacturers caused a sensation in the trade. But when their executive circulated its members to find how far they would be prepared to press the general demands in their own mills, the overwhelming response was against drastic action. As a result, the enforcement of the proposals was indefinitely delayed. But the long hoped-for trade revival could not he brought about by other means, and apparently the employers formerly opposed to the proposals have now decided that there is no other way out. The desperate position of many of the mill-owners has to be considered. Formerly wealthy men have been reduced to comparative poverty. They have made tremendous sacrifices to keep their mills working and their staffs engaged in constant work. Old-established firms have gone out of business, and others have banded themselves into a combine which has not yet managed to meet foreign competition, and particularly Eastern competition, on level terms. If the manufacturers are now unanimous in the realisation that a wage-reduction is the only route to survival, it. is only because the alternative of closing the mills would he a national disaster of infinitely greater proportions. To that extent the mill-owners will have undoubtedly precipitated the present situation with the deepest reluctance.