NOTES AND COMMENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 122, 5 March 1942, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

AMERICAN INDUSTRY. “It is all very well to say that the United Stated are there and that their great capacity is to be added to our own, but people in this country do not realise what industry in the United States is going through in the present generation,” said Mr Hopkinson, M.P., in the House of Commons. “At one time when there was free immigration into the United States from all the nations of Europe, trade unionism, as we know it, hardly existed at all in the United States. In every industry and particularly in mining, there were so many men who did not even speak the language 'of their adopted country that trade unionism was practically impossible. Trade unionism in America is now going through stages that were passed generations ago by trade unionism in this country. It is finding its feet, just as trade unionism did in this country. The restriction upon immigration at the present time has limited the importation of foreigners not speaking the language of the country of their adoption, and has had a profound effect upon the position. American trade unionism has increased at a tremendous pace, but it has not the experience that British trade unionism has had.’ CHALLENGE TO DEMOCRACIES.

“The present war is a clear challenge to the democracies to demonstrate that they are capable of regulating their economies and trade so as to attain progressively higher living standards and minimise economic rivalries and hostilities. Not to accept that challenge would be to confess that democracy cannot provide the answer either to poverty or to war. The handling.of agricultural surpluses is one of the major problems. The approach to it should be systematic) commodity by commodity. But the men who do the planning in wheat or cotton or sugar or coffee must be aware that their plans are but a part of a whole, and that the prices which they seek to establish must bear an appropriate relationship to the prices of other commodities in international trade. This is important. Permanently effective action cannot be taken in this field unless each step is related to every other step and to the whole. Indeed, it may be found impossible to work out an effective agreement on a single commodity without bringing to bear economic pressures from other points in the trade structure. Sooner or later there must be a master plan to which all individual plans are adapted. That whole will he created out of the various parts. Among them will be international commodity agreements.” —Mr Leslie A. Wheeler, in American “Foreign Affairs.”