"CHEAP" LABOUR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 196, 21 August 1933, Page 9

"CHEAP" LABOUR.

AND HIGH EFFCIENCY.

JAPANESE ADVANTAGE.

QUOTA AGREEMENT URGED.

The secret of Japan's advantage in trade competition lies in "the combination of low labour costs with high technical efficiency," says Mr. G. Ward Price, of the "Daily Mail," who recently paid a special visit to Japan for the purpose of investigating conditions there. He told the following remarkable story of his visit to one of the Toyako mills, where 700 girls and 300 • men are employed:— "The girls are paid from <5d a day as apprentices, who! have just left the primary schools at the age of 13, \ip to 1/IOJ a day for a highly skilled weaver of 17" or IS. Besides, they get practically free board, lodging, and spare-time schooling, being charged less than 2d a day for all these benefits combined. The men are paid 1/ to 3/6 a day. There are also yearly bonuses and gratuities on retirement. "With such labour costs, is it surprising that Lancashire cannot compete? "In one of the two weaving sheds there were 520 automatic looms. It was a huge wooden building, well lighted, scrupulously clean, filled with the roar of clacking machinery—and 22 girls ran the whole shed. There were two smart girls who tend 40 looms each, getting 1/10 J a day; twelve girls who look after 30 looms each at 1/4J a day; four girls who run 20 looms each {'beginners,' I was told) at 9d a day; and four overseers at 1/10J a day. " 'Shockingly underpaid,' Lancashire would say. But by the Japanese standard of living, these wages are quite good. In fact, the girls come to the mill to save money for their dowry. Living in Dormitories. "They live in 'dormitories' belonging to the company, just as comfortably as in any Japanese middle-class home. I went over these dormitories in two large mills. The rooms open off long wooden corridors, of which one side looks out on a garden. Eight girls sleep in a room about lGft square, with a floor of straw matting, and sliding-door cupboards to hold the quilts that cover them at night—the same as in any Japanese hotel. There were flowers in these rooms; sometimes a gramophone, and books on little dwarf tables. Then there are restrooms, a hospital, and classrooms where lessons in dressmaking, cooking, ordinary school subjects—even English —are given dailj'. At some mills school attendance is voluntary. In one of those I visited the girls have to devote three hours of their spare time to school each day. "Both mills had a fine big tiled Japanese bath, which all the girls use daily, and there are dressing rooms with dozens of large mirrors, before which ;hese pretty little, plump, pink-faced lappers array themselves in the dainty kimonos they wear off duty. They look as happy as the ordinary English school girl, singing as they tripped arm in arm along the corridors in their white Japanese socks. "I went to the big dining room to see them at dinner. It was the ordinary kind of Japanese meal—rice, vegetables, soya-bean curd, tea to drink. They helped themselves, and may eat as much as they like.

"The cost to the company of thus boarding and lodging their staff works out at just over 3/ per week, which must be added to the average wages bil) of 7/ or 8/ per head per week.

" Not Yet at its Maximum."

"The secret of their advantage lies in the combination of low labour costs with high technical efficiency. Instead of cherishing false hopes that this Japanese competition will soon pass away like a summer storm, we should realise that it is not yet at its maximum, for the Japanese Cotton Spinners' Association is at present limiting the dutput of its members by about 30 per cent.

"Our only hope is to come to an agreement with Japan about marketing zones or export quotas."

With contented workers—and Japanese standards of content are different to ours—it will be seen that the problem is not an easy one, especially as Japan at the Economic Conference is expected to suggest the abolition of all trade barriers.