MOTOR PRODUCTION.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 January 1920, Page 12

MOTOR PRODUCTION.

(By Sir Leo Chiozza Money).

ON THE GRAND SCALE. THE OLYMPIA OBJECT LESSON. .

London, Oct. 15. A new term—"mass production"—lias made its appearance i.ll the discussion of industrial affairs. It is a fairly effective name for a tiling which, unfortunately, is still nearly new in British industry, but which has for many years been widely practised in America and elsewhere in the production of things as diverse as motor-cara, gla.-.s tumblers, locomotives, and watches. It simply means standardised large-scale production. From the point of view of national industry it elevates the scale of output and increases wealth by applying scientific method to the economising of labor. From the point of view of the individual industry it enormously increases its importance and makes it the servant of many instead of the servant of the few. From the point of view of the worker in the industry it so increases the product of labor as to afford the means of paying high wages. Finally, from the point of view of the consumer, it yields a cheap product which one can buy in the assurance that the cheapness is not won out of a sweated wage, but out of economised and well-remunerated .labor. THE MOTOR-CAE AS AN EXAMPLE. One could have no more striking illustration of the virtues of mass production than its effect upon the mote-car industry. The British method has been, for the most part, to make relatively few cars for a limited well-to-do market. The British car has been accordingly an individual product, calling for the devotion of a great deal of skilled labor exerted in a relatively small establishment concentrating its attention upon a restricted output of highly-finished machines. The American maker, on the other hand, after evolving a type suitable for reproduction on a large scale, has made cars by the hundred thousand, each 1 standard part being tackled economically, often with the aid of a special machine, with consequent economy of labor. The expensive individual British car, only to be commanded by a big purse, was, before the war, made by low-priced labor. By way of ironic contrast the cheap American car for the million, which some rich men would be ashamed to own, was made by workmen paid two or three times the rates paid in the. British industry. The national as well as the industrial aspeit of this matter should not escape attention. Here the ownership of a car is still a rare thing. In America, according to the latest returns, there is one motor-car to about every three families in the country. At one and the same time we see mass production yielding high wages to the workmen and cheap runabouts which the highly-paid workman can, in many instances, afford to buy. THE MOTOR-CAR EXHIBITION. I went to the motor-car exhibition hoping to find some serious attempt by British engineers to produce cars by mass production for the masses. What I found was a finite magnificent exhibition of first-class engineering jobs which, fnr the most part, could only be bought by possessors of long purses. And it is not to be gainsaid that long purses exist at the termination of a war which has multiplied millionaires i and demi-millionaires. There is an eager demand for high-priced cars by an actually large, but relatively limited, number of persons who prefer to buy something of an expensive character. The exhibition gives little or no sign of any serious attempt to lift the production of motor-cars to the grand scale as it is understood in America and practised by many firms who eacli produce hundreds of thousands of cars per annum. There is 110 realisation here of the remarkable fact that over six million families in America own motorcars, and that this result has been achieved by the mass production, which alone can yield a popular product. America, too, has her luxury cars, for she has, of course, a bigger luxury market than we have. Bui it is not necessary to despise the popular market because there exists a restricted luxury trade. Our own neglect of machines for the masses can only have one result, and that is that after riie war, as before the war, the American cheap car will successfully appeal to the British buyers. I see that the present price'of the Ford in America is only 525 dollars, and that tile output of Ford ears has now readied over three thousand a day. What is it that stands in the way of the erection here of a plant capable of producing 250 cars a day to sell at a price not exceeding £l5O each? It can hardly I be wages, for wages are still much lower here than they arc in America.