NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 267, 7 August 1929, Page 10

NOTES OF THE DAY

The Prime Minister made a bad mistake in accusing his predecessor in office of placing an embargo on him going on the London market for loans for a period of two years. He made a worse mistake, however, yesterday when, forced to admit his error, he sought to cover his admission by a new charge that the period of the alleged embargo was 18 months. On his own presentation of the facts of the position, Sir Joseph Ward stands convicted of error. He admits that when Mr. Downie Stewart relinquished the office of Finance Minister he' (Mr. Stewart) left it for his successor to decide on the policy to be pursued in regard to borrowing on the London market. So far from tying the hands of Sir Joseph Ward in this direction care was taken not to do so. In the light of the facts made public yesterday the Prime Minister has placed himself in a very unpleasant position. An unreserved withdrawal of his original allegation, with a frank admission of error, would have been commended. To profess to make an amende for an unwarranted charge and at the same time to make a fresh charge, which clearly has as little foundation as the first, is as unedifying as it is indefensible.

Mr. Maxton, one of the leading lights of the British LabourSocialist left-wing, declares that he “can think of nobody benefiting from the Labour Government but two reprieved murderers.” The British Independent Labour Party is not Communist, but it is not very far removed from it as regards its extreme Socialist aspirations. Its members in Parliament swell the personnel of Mr. MacDonald’s party, and the Prime Minister’s progress with his various schemes is dependent to that extent upon their support. It has been considered that the MacDonald Government’s main trouble during its present term of office will be, not the effecting of compromises with the opposition parties, but the propitiating of its own left-wing. Mr. Maxton’s outburst would make it appear that this task is not likely to be easy.

Trouble in the British textile industries has been threatening for some considerable time past. It began several years ago during the ’post-war boom, when heavy over-capitalisation in those industries was followed by a severe slump and the failure of many of the boom companies. Since then the development of the artificial silk industry has placed the older industries in a somewhat precarious position, from which the only apparent remedy is a reduction of working costs. This, so far as it affects wages, the operatives are strenuously resisting, and the outlook at present is not very hopeful. The predicament of the textile industries is comparable with that in which the coal industry finds itself as the result of the appearance of new competitors, and the same necessity exists for reorganising its methods to meet the altered conditions. In each case the obvious course is mutual co-operation of employers and workers in the direction of increasing production and cheapening the cost of manufacture in order to meet competition on more equal terms. There is nothing to be gained, as the coal-miners have proved to their cost, by adding the losses of strikes to the losses now being experienced through bad conditions of trade.