The Daily News TUESDAY, AUGUST 4. "GOING SLOW."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 192, 4 August 1908, Page 2

The Daily News TUESDAY, AUGUST 4. "GOING SLOW."

Speaking at a meeting of the Christclmrch Employers' Association last Thursday night, Air G. X. Booth, head of the livni 01 Booth and McDonald, implement makers, gave utterance to some statements of more than passing interest. He said strikes might be ■made illegal and the definition of a strike made wide enough to apparently cover the whole ground, and aiders and abettors might be iticluded; but that was not the end of the mailer. Workmen did not need to strike in any legal sense. They could exert all the prossure they wanted to exert on employers without doing anything of the kind. They had a plan of their own which had been well understood and worked for centuries whidh was perfectly effective, and would be effective, no matter what law might be in existence; and that was the plan of "going slow." tie quoted ligures from the ollicial statistics to show how that plan worked in New Zealand now. The ligures related to a certain trade which he

would not mention, but which was by no means .in unimportant part of the industrial organisation of the Dominion. In 11)01 the hands employed in the trade numbered 4170, tlie horsepower used was 1037, the amount invested in laud, buildings, and plant was £455,021, the value of material used was £405,500, paid ill wages £361,130, value of total product £1,002,205, product per man £251 ?s. Od. For the year 1005 the following increases had taken place:—Hands employed 553, horse-power 980, capital invested in land, buildings and plant £208,000, material used £15,000, wages paid £53,411. Tlie increase in the output should have been £140,000 with the additional bauds employed; but if there I were included the increase in the amount paid in wage.-:, in the horsepower, and the amount of capital invested, the increase in product should have amounted to £170,485. Thvy would hardly believe him, he thought, when he told them that the actual increase in the product in the year 1005 as compared with 1001 was only £15,310. The product per man fell as between 1001 and 1005 from £254 75.0. to £224 17s. 3d., a falling oil' inellUicm-.v of 12 per cent, iiul nearly the whole in crease, in the value of the product wu: accounted for by the increased amount of material used. So that the extra labour and extra capital invested yielded the employers of the trade the magnificent sum of £440. 11 was hardly too much to say that for all that expenditure of time and money, and the labour i of 553 men, the country gained nothing. That happened to be a trade not so much harassed by labour conditions a-* I others. Xor was' it a case of slackness <n trade, but rather the reverse, for thai . particular trade was fairly active at the time. The value of imports, however, had increased by £234,184, while the value of the local product had increased by onlv £15,310. Jf those figures had any meaning at all, it surely was that i.rtifical regulations applied lo that particular industry had had the effect of choking it and driving it into the hands of foreigners. The illustration, he oclieved, might be multiplied by as many industries as there were in the country. It was quite suflieient to show the (iovorment were on the wrong track in trying to control the industry by State regulation. Hy all means let there be regulations that would ensure the factories being sanitary, and that women and children, who were, perhaps, unable to look after themselves, should be properly protected, but if one set to work to coddle adult men, even by the establishing of artiiieal minimum wage rales, or by any other means which tended to decrease the incentive to exertion, it must eventually demoralise them and reduce their industrial cliiciency. He was nut going lo say that the arbitration system was soleiy to blame for that state of affairs, but ill so far as it embodied the principle that work; was not .a thing that a man should engage in cheerfully and manfully, hut that it was a hateful necessity upon him for nis sins, which was not onlv .jusliliable tor a man to dodge but creditable to him m do so; if it be implied that Ui« mant'e of State sanction was to be thrown over meanness, selfishness, and laziness, and weakness, a premium put on ellii eiency—then the arbitration system was so far to blame. Figures, we are t»ld, can be made to prove anything, but in the absence of further information cm-

ccrning the particular industry in qmstion, and Hie conditions governing I'. .•■'.! arc not disposed lb accept il>\ li.-.ill's conclusions as correct. Vn'c would be sorry to believe that the avenge New Zealand artisan is lazy or a "point.'.':.'' Our experience, on the ton irary, is that whatever his failings, lie is, tor the most part, a conscientious worker, which, however, cannot 'be su d of many of the leaders of Labor.