UNDER-CUTTING THE FOREIGNER

Dunstan Times, Issue 3499, 15 December 1930, Page 3

UNDER-CUTTING THE FOREIGNER

NOW BRITISH MAKERS ARE COMING ON

Britain is beating the foreign dumpers at their own game. Special investigations made by the ‘Sunday Express ’ show that the British workman has gone into the market hitherto exclusively held by his Continental rivals. "The story of this new industrial triumph is told below. Two years after the war, foreign manufacturers of cheap merchandise began Hooding the home market with their products at prices which created a great demand. Trade was captured at an alarming rate; British men and women were thrown out of work; many factories had practically to close their doors, and millions of pounds a year, taken from the pockets of the working and middle-class population, helped to keep Germans, French Belgians, Japanese, Swiss, and Czecho-Slovakians in employment. In other words, 50 per cent, of the goods being sold in many of the stores and shops catering for the masses with articles ranging in price from Id to (sd. came from abroad. With a kind of common instinct the British producers set their teeth and started out to eonibat the menace. One by one old ideas were scrapped and new methods and machinery introduced.

The glass industry, which had been practically crippled by the fierce competition of Belgium, was one of the first to reorganise, and firms in the North of England have now recaptured practically the whole of the trade in cheap glassware. Five years ago Japan and Germany had almost a monopoly of the trade in tooth brushes. British firms set up plant for their manufacture, and few are now being imported. The same applies to varnish brushes. One of the epics of the great fight has been the struggle to oust foreign mechanical toys. it has been done by a London firm. In two years this firm has doubled its staff, and last year took £SO,OUU worth of business from Germany. . One order was for 750,000 mechanical trains, but the German manufacturers were beaten both in regard to quality and price. Another London firm which joined the fray decided to adapt idle looms for the manufacture of ribbon, a trade previously almost exclusively in the hands of' the Germans and Swiss. They are now turning out thousands of gross of yards a year, and even exporting their products. Cheap lines in shoe laces, mending wools, elastic articles, such as suspenders and braces, skirt beltings, cork socks, and woven name labels arc also being produced by up-to-date machinery in this factory. In another direction a third London firm has almost completely ousted the Continental trade in birthday _ books, loose-leaf notebooks, pocket diaries, and stationery. One of the finest achievements is the enterprise of a firm of floor covering manufacturers. When they found that the United States was exporting to Britain great quantities of floor coverings in handv sizes, they decided to compete. To-day they have practically captured the English market, and have increased the number of employees by 300 per cent. Another American monopoly has been broken down by a Scottish firm who succeeded in producing decorative wrappings, gift boxes, and flat Christmas cards cheaper than they could be turned out across the Atlantic. Their Christmas card orders last year exceeded a million. Sheffield and the midlands are cutting prices for cutlery, and by turning out good-class articles at popular prices are steadily regaining the trade lost to Germany. ' . One of the outstanding results is that a firm owning a wide-flung chain of stores retailing articles of everyday use at 3d and 6d, are now spending £5,000,000 more per year on the purchase of goods of British manufacture than they did five years ago. Their purchase of foreign articles has decreased correspondingly. Woolwortb’s new store at Harrow contains 2,000 separate lines, but every article is of British manufacture. This tribute to the enterprise and doggedness of the British trader is emphasised by the fact that 95 per cent, of the goods displayed in this firm’s 400 stores in this country were made either in Britain or the dominions.