BRITAIN'S SHIPPING REVIVAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 214, 10 September 1928, Page 6

BRITAIN'S SHIPPING REVIVAL.

One of the most remarkable proofs of Britain's industrial vitality and recuperative power has been the recent revival in the shipbuilding trades at Home. In spite of the general industrial depression from which the country has suffered so long, the figures now available show that British shipbuilding yards are constructing on account of foreign orders almost as many vessels as were building in Britain before the war.

Among other things, this means that Britain has once more asserted her superiority over all her rivals in ship-building. In 1916-20 the Americans made their effort to establish a great mercantile marine, and it was a tragic failure. Between 1923 and 1926, when British trade depression was at its worst, Holland and Germany were not only securing repair and reconstruction jobs against British competition, but -were actually building ships for British owners. To-day, according to the trade returns, no ships are being built abroad for British owners, the British yards have recovered their hold on the extremely valuable repairing trade, and contracts have been pouring in from Norway and Sweden, France and America, Canada and Chile—in fact, from the ends of the earth. As a matter of comparison, it is interesting to note that Britain is now building twenty times as many ocean-going steamers as the United States, and about fifty per cent more than all the Continental countries put together. All this is very encouraging, not only because it means greatly increased industrial activity at Home, but because work done for foreign countries constitutes an "invisible export" of immense value in the balancing of our trade accounts year by year. One should not forget that a factor in this success has been the ability of the employers and the unions to work together and make readjustments. There is little to fear for Britain's industrial future so long as she is capable of manifesting such remarkable powers of recovery in a trade so long depressed and for the time almost submerged by foreign competition.