FUTURE OF INDUSTRY.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 March 1921, Page 10

FUTURE OF INDUSTRY.

ADVICE AND WARNING. PEACE AN ESSENTIAL. RUIN OR SALVATION. A valuable reference to the British industrial outlook, and inc.aentally to the world’s industrial outlook, was made by Lord Inchcape during his speech at the annual meeting of the P. and O. Company. “There are,” he said, “some things we must have if this country is not to sink to be a second Holland, and the first of them all is industrial peace. The British working men are more advantageously placed than any other body of working men on earth. But these benefits will be worth absolutely nothing to them if they do not pull their weight in the industrial boat, help to keep it on a steady keel, and restrain the wild men who are hurrying it over the weir, where it will be dashed to pieces. With the trade unions scaling down output to the level of the least efficient worker, setting themselves against payment by results, and largely influenced, and in many cases controlled, by men who believe there ought always to be a state of war between employers and employed—l confess that the industrial outlook seems to be about as grave as it could be. Five hours’ work a day for five days a week, and little enough done at that, simply won’t see us through. As things are now, it is all but impossible for a British manufacturer to quote firm terms and a definite date of delivery. The consequence is that orders which would have come here are going abroad and unemployment increases. INCREASED PRODUCTION NECESSARY. “I repeat that the question of industrial peace is becoming for us a question of national ruin or . national salvation. Unless we work harder and produce more, unless a durable concordat is established between Labor and Capital, we shall never be able to break this endless chain of cause apd effect which piles up the cost of living, starts wages in another hopeless chase after. prices, and, by thus trebling and quadrupling the costs of production, makes it impossible for our customers to buy what we must sell if we are to keep going at all. Give us a year of stabilised wages, payment by results, with hearty co-opera-tion, and. this country w*ill steadily recover what she was forced to yield during the war. Without that truce to industrial strife the days of her commercial and financial supremacy are numbered. Industrial peace is not going to be brought about Governmental action. It will be a matter for individual firms and trade unions and organisations to arrange among themselves. ECONOMIC LAWS. Lord Inchcape then proceeded to denounce dumping legislation. He stood for commercial liberty, and said there' had been no greater dumpers in all the world than British manufacturers, and if they embarked on a campaign of prohibiting the importation of goods into the United Kingdom they would be setting an example to which they could take no exception in others. There were some indications that economic laws were about to assert themselves. /Foreign nations— Scandinavia, Belgium, America, Japan, and India—might be qble to supply Britain more cheaply than she could supply herself. Even France might be a competitor, Germany, with her low exchange—with the mark worth a penny instead of a shilling—-certainly would be. Panaceas and fallacies must be thrown overboard. The country had to get back to sound economics and to the gold standard if these small islands were to maintain their position in the worid. No quack cure such as an international currency, nothing but hard fact, which means living well within our income and getting rid of our debt, will see us through. Discussing how far the Government could help the nation to get once more on the straight and narrow path of sound economics. Lord Inchcape said it should abolish the excess profits duty which had proved to bo most unfair and pernicious in its incidence. The duty had led to carelessness, private and business extravagance, a rise in wages, a consequent rise in prices, an inflation of the paper currency, and universal chaos in the finances of the country. They would never get the industries of the country going on a sound basis till this duty was abolished and the pre-war incentive to work and economy in the administration of business restored. It was interesting to observe that no man was more emphatic on this point than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whb was the author of the excess profits duty, now that he has had some years of practical business experience in the city. TRUE KEYS TO ECONOMY.

In pointing out where the true keys to economy are to be found, Lord Inchcape said: — “Before the war 40 per cent of our exports went to Europe, and neither we nor any of the Allies, nor any of the States that our joint victory has brought into precarious existence, can be prosperous and stable until the economic recovery is general and includes both the vanquished and the victors. One and all will revive from the war in proportion as Germany and Austria and Russia and Hungary revive. One and all will be held back in proportion as they are held back. Abroad as well as at home commercial freedom political peace are the true keys to jeconoray; and until we get them we. may as well dismiss all hope of returning to the gold standard, or of paying off our enormous debt, or of giving industry the chance which it needs to create more wealth.

“It is something to the good that we are at last making a beginning towards the resumption of trade with Russia but much more than that will have to be done if Europe as a whole is to find its feet. One of the chief reasons why British industry is depressed! is the absence of a Continental demand for British goods. “For five Inog years this country, its Allies; and its enemies went on producing merely to destroy 7 and they destroyed much of what they previously .possessed. The consequence is that the world is so much the poorer. The wealth in this way put out of existence is now represented by those who gave it by paper obligations from the various Governments, which means from the people themselves. Interest on this debt, and the debt itself can only be repaid by taxation, and the taxation can only be paid by production. If it is not so paid, bankruptcy must ensue, and repudiation, or a settlement with creditors at possibly a shilling in the Ji s thn.XAwJi/ i