MORE HARM THAN GOOD

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 7, 8 July 1922, Page 7

MORE HARM THAN GOOD

rA PROTECTION DIFFICULTY

GERMANY'S LOW WAGE LEVEL.

(UNHID PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPTRI-HT.)

(AUSTRALIA;; - NSW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.) LONDON, 6th July.

In consequence of Cabinet proposing to enforce the Safeguarding of Industries; Act, by putting _ a duty of 33. 1-3 per cent, upon fabric gloves, Lancashire cotton spinners and operatives sent a deputation to Mr. Lloyd George and pointed out that the harm that would be done to Lancashire's yarn trade would be far greater than any benefit to the gloveniakers.

Mr. Lloyd George replied that he was alarmed at the prospects of German people working for wages, the purchasing power of which was only 40 per cent, of those paid in Britain. This was not natural, and was unforeseen by tariff reformers or free traders before the war. German goods were not yet flooding the markets of the world, but the time would come when legislation like the Safeguarding of Industries Act would be essential, not as a tariff, but as a wall against the deluge. He promised that Cabinet would again discuss the problem of fabric gloves.

[The latest issue of the Scientific American contains; an interesting article on the comparative gold values, of wages in various countries. The comparison, owing to the complex problem of exchange, is not readily made, but it can be approximately summarised in its simplest form by using the lowest rate considered as the unit. In the list treated by the article, Russia and Austria, with their money values ruined, are not considered. German rates of pay are taken as the unity, and when the wages are reduced to their gold value, they work out as follow : Industrial : Germany 1, China 2,. Spain 4, Japan 6, Italy 6, Belgium 8, Prance 11, Great Britain 14, United States 37; agricultural : Germany" 1, Spain 2, Italy 5, Japan 6, France 8, Belgium 9, Great Britain 9, United States 23. The figures in industry and in agriculture are not comparable as between the groups. In the industrial group, the unit (German pay) is I gold value of a little less than Is 3-id; in the agricultural, it js a trifle over B|d.]