LABOUR-COST IN SEA TRADE

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 113, 13 May 1921, Page 6

LABOUR-COST IN SEA TRADE

Before the war, the United States mercantile marine lacked the ships, the men, and the money. To-day, it possesses all three. It possesses the ships, because of the war. For the same reason, it possesses the money, since the war changed the United States from a debtor nation to a creditor nation, and also gave tho Americans a new hold on foreign markets. Thirdly, the United States mercantile marine possesses the men—but (and this is the weak point) American shipowners have not heretofore been able to command a sufficient supply of efficient seamen at an economic wage, and whether they will be able to do so in the future is one of the issues outstanding in the present strike of American seamen against a reduction of wages. Labourcost can make or mar the American mercantile marine "tow in its post-war infancy. That American capital will make a big bid to win cannot be doubted, for all the other factors in .the mercantile marine effort have been carefully adjusted ; and even the big naval shipbuilding programme is partly a move ,to advance the mercantile arm, Americans having noted, from British experience, that tho shipping and shipbuilding industries are twins, and that, in the matter of organising,technical resources, naval shipbuilding nnd mercantile shipbuilding are also'twins. If the American effort fails, it will be due to the economic cost of the personnel, and that is a factor directly at issue in the seamen's strike*