NEED FOR NEW GOLD

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 129, 4 June 1927, Page 20

NEED FOR NEW GOLD

EESTOEING THE WORLD'S

PEOSPEEITY.

During the course of a recent dinner in London, arranged by the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Sir Alfred Mond, when replying to a toast, said that the world required a new gold inflation. No one who had followed tho curves of trade could fail to, see that the prosperity of the world had always been in ratio to the discovery of lew goldfields. The financial aspect of industry was never sufficiently regarded by those persons who : seemed to expect trade to improve in some miraculous way as by manna dropping from heaven. People wondered at the prosperity of America. How much of that prosperity was due to the fact that by most ingenious elaboration they had in America mobilised dead credit and credits which had foui d no 'orm of expression and had harnessed them to the wheels of industry? That enabled them to produce a condition of prosperity which, on the authority of the leading bankers, was* likely to remain a permanent factor. We wanted new methods in. industry, and we also wanted new methods of finance. Unless some of the industries got together and were rationalised on modern methods, unless they concentrated their plans and ruthlessly destroyed antiquated and obsolete machinery, unless they introduced much more advanced methods of research, he failed to understand ho.v they could expect to survive tho modern competition of Germany and America.

"People," ho continued, "talk a •good deal about coal. Some arc in favour of low carbonisation and others of high carbonisation. lam an advocate of producing coal cheaply and well, and of our being able to buy in this country as clean coal as we could get from Silesia during the strike. The average unit production of coku oven plant in this country is 300 tofis, while in America some of their units are producing 10,000 tons. How can English glass furnaces expect to compete with America on that basis? We cannot rely on fortuitous flow of trade. We can either remain a leader o- become simply a backwater getting trade after the factories of everyone else aro full. Unless we set our house in order I have grave fears that this is the lamentable Condition at which we shall arrive."

With regaTd to flic big chemical merger in which he is a leading figure, Sir Alfred said that it was a decision which required considerable courage, but it was a decision which those concerned reached deliberately because they had conio to the conclusion that if. the Imperial. Chemical industry was to survive in the front rank as they intended- it should, it could only do so by the pooling of brains, finance, technical knowledge, and research. The result had been obvious to anyone with any experience, and in a fa r months they . were. obtaining results from the merger which ho did not think they wouid obtain.in years. "I will lot you into a secret," ho concluded. "We made that whole merger in only six weeks from; start to.finish. Britain has got,to do those things unless we aro to go under. There is no earthly reason . why British industry should not continue'Jp.lcad, and it will bo our own fault if we allow ourselves to descend from the high pedestal on which in the past we have been placed."