HUB OF THE EMPIRE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 17, 21 January 1916, Page 7

HUB OF THE EMPIRE

HOW WAR AFFECTS IT

BUSINESS MAN'S OBSERVATIONS

BRITAIN AND BRITISH INDUSTRIES;,.

Mr; .A. M., Ferguson, who is officially, Belgian Consul at Auckland, and is a director of the firm of John Burns and Co. of that city, returned yesterday from an ext€nded visit to Great Britain, Europe, and America. He arrived by ■ the Tainui, and is proceeding to Auckland in the same vessel. Mr. Ferguson, in an interview yesterday, said that 51. Pollet, the Belgian Consul-General in London, who was at one time Belgian Consul in Sydney, and has also been in New Zealand, told him that he was absolutely astounded at the generosity displayed by New Zealand : towards his distressed countrymen. Nor was M. Pollet alone in being thus surprised; all Belgians had the same feeling towards this distant but as they imagined equally wealthy and warm-hearted country. People at Homo Have been much surprised that New Zealand can command so much money. Indeed, New Zealand looms large in the popular mind at Home; it was referred to on one occasion as "the aristocrat of the Dominions," and is the subject of praise by Canadians and South Africans. DISORGANISATION OF INDUSTRY. Mr. Ferguson is a " hardware man," with interests in many directions, and he discovered many things. He was, ho said, powerfully impressed by some of the failings of the \ War Office in its method of handling purchases. It was choked with business, which resulted in delays often very serious to the firms it dealt with, and it.was losing,enormously by the system which enabled any Tom, Dick, and Harry to secure contracts for all sorts of supplies and farm, them out. The Admiralty was not so bad. He even quoted a case in which, in effect, the War Office and the Admiralty bid against each other for the purchase of a shipment of timber. About nine-tenths of the metal workers of England, said Mr. Ferguson, are now engaged on the manufacture of war supplies, and the' consequence: is, of course, that the civilian market, however it hungers for the staple products of English foundries and workshops, has to starve. It was recently decided that the Allies must increase their output of shells by 50 per cent. Considering that prior to that decision Britain was importing steel in large quantities from America, it looked as if the manufacturing ability of the Old Country in peaceful respects was likely to disappear altogether, and that far more than the. native supply of metal would be poured, into the war. Hardware would be almost uabuyable.

CAN WE GET GERMANY'S TRADE?

This matter brought Mr. Ferguson to the much-debated question of " collar, ing" Germany's trade. »He did noi think it was even remotely possible to do it. It had long been obvious, ho said, that the British manufacturer would decline to make cheap goods. He preferred to keep up the good old quality and the good old pattern, and a' vast amount of business went for this reason to' Germany. But even if this were modified, and if the British manufacturer put his house in order and went in for " efficiency " in the big sense of the word, there would stiD. be an enormous amount of business ■ quite beyond his capacity, and this" would still be the field for Germany. Roughly speaking, the British maker, say, of tools, devoted himself to making goods of the sort that appeals to the expert, who after all is not in the majority. There are a host of people who regard a hammer, for instance, as merely a tool for driving picture nails and mending hen-houses. No British. , maker will build hammers purely for such users; but there are plenty of Germans to do that, and to seize upon a thousand other."cheap" industries that the British always turn up their noses at. Even if Britain desired to seize this sort of business, she had not the population to do it; barring the fact that British business is not as efficient as it might be, Britain has almost as much work (normally, that is) as she can handle. On the other hand, he had seen plenty of evidence that the business enterprise of the Germans was not idle during the war. Especially in America, matters were in train for a tremendous trade campaign to be commenced immediately after the war; and it looked as if the world would see some remarkable hap-: penings in a commercial way then. Mr. Ferguson referred to the way in which Germany had secured v practically, monopolies of many great manufactures, that of dyestuffs being, of course, a notorious case. Terrible difficulties resulted from this when the war cut off supplies, for in some cases cloth cost as much to dye as to make. He mentioned the case where a firm bought a barrel of red dye for 6d a pound, and, as it was not quite the right shade, stowed it away. Some time after, when dyes were running short, the despised barrel was sold for 45s a pound! Some time ago a big concern, the British Dyes, Limited, was formed by the leading dye firms, and it was now erecting great works and supplying its shareholders. It was greatly handicapped by the fact that the Government had declined to guarantee it any adequate protection. , jjad that been forthcoming, the money would simply have rolled into it.

EXTRAVAGANCE RIPE.

Asked whether he had seen anything ' to justify the reports of "wild estrava-. gance" in England^ and the^ endeavour to set up an economy campaign, Mr.■•— Ferguson said that there was undoubtedly a great deal ,of extravagance. It was largely due to' the fact that in an. enormous number of cases the wives and families of soldiers were better off now than they had «ver been before, and w«ro living right up to their state of comparative affluence. As to the economy, campaign, it had been a sort of war-cry, for a long time. Politicians and statesmen went about talking of it and advocating it everywhere, but none of them seemed to be able to suggest any way, . of bringing it about.