WISE MEN FROM THE EAST.

Taihape Daily Times, 29 May 1919, Page 7

WISE MEN FROM THE EAST.

CAPTURING THE WORLD'S MARKET.

During a week’s tour of the industrial towns of the Midlands I have been struck with the constant iteration of one phrase —Japanese competition (says James Dunn in the Daily Mail). The iron-workers of Black Country, the leather merchants of Walsall, the hardware manufacturers of Birmingham, as well as the small dealers in sundry products, all regard with deep anxiety Japanese encroachments on the markets of the world. The wise men from the East have been learning in the best European schools for more than twenty years, and they arc now garnering the harvest of their foresight and enterprise.

Years ago the best commercial schools of Manchester wo,re packed with Japanese studying the intricacies of cotton spinning. In Germany and Austria right up to the war Japanese were learning how to make those wonderful toys which have been the joy of children, and the problem of our own manufacturers. Where to-day can they make the porcelain face of a doll such as they turned out in Vienna for half-a-crown? And where in the wide world do they make those ingen.ous mechanical toys of tin that came from Nuremberg? The answers to these questions is— Japan. From iron plates to toy motorcars, from cotton goods lo fancy leather articles. Japan is capturing the markets of the world.

Labour is cheap in the “England of the East.” No strikes or rumours cf strikes, interrupt the even tenor of the business way. The Japanese ironworker is content with nimponee a day, hence the ridiculously fehoap Jprtccs charged for Japanese iron in Canada, where once the Black Country held undisputed sway. During the last six months not more fhan a score of tons of Black Country iron have been exported to Canada. From South Africa comes a similar story. Japanese prices arc so low that that only by .transplanting industries from this country can .cur manufacturers hope to compete with the abnormal exports from the East. At one time the average British housewife stocked her home with cheap articles from Germany,; to-day almost every domestic article is made in'Japan, even

domestic article Is made in Japan, even to bootlaces.

Those silent, studious. observant young Japanese who thronged our commercial colleges a quarter of a century ago are the builders of the new Japan. They were flic pioneers of Japanese prosperity, the commercial supplanters of the old-time Samurai. Cheerfully wo taught them, eagerly they learned, and now, when our trade is weighed down /by taxation land baulked 'by strikes, the quiet little man from Nippon is playing the master where once he was the scholar.