"FOUND GUILTY"

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 50, 27 August 1930, Page 16

"FOUND GUILTY"

U.S.A. TEXTILE INDUSTRY.

DISOBEYING ECONOMIC LAWS

Terming it "an apt reply to Mr. Barber's comment on the American textile industry," a correspondent forwards the following extract from the "Bulletin of the International Management Institute."

Mr. Henry P. Kendall, of the Kendall Mills, Boston, Massachusetts, in an address to the National Association of Cotton Manufacturers at their semiannual meeting held recently at Boston, thus arraigned the textile industry of the United States: "The textile industry has teen tried in the court of public opinion and found guilty of habitual disobedience to the laws of I economics and common sense. We need to stop to-day, right now, disobeying proven principles and laws of modern industrial development. There are some fundamentals which we well might consider as a Ten Commandments for the textile industry: "First: Thou shalt seek understanding of the industry's history; the basic causes of its troubles and problems. ' : "Second. —Thou shalt think straight, face issues, and speak plain common sense. "Third.—Thou shalt lift the industry out of the long-hour, low-wage class, for by so doing the gap between production and demand will be narrowed and the move will be in harmony with the trend of social betterment. "Fourth. —Thou shalt maintain earnings of employees, for the law of industrial prosperity is the maintenance of purchasing power. "Fifth: Thou shalt exalt competency of management before all else, and welcome young red blood into the industry, to do things, not the way they always have been done, but in the one best' way. "Sixth: Thou shalt compete in ereativeness, rather than on price alone, for research ia to-day the gateways to survival and. leadership. : "Seventh: Thon shalt integrate functions, for profit; to-day is the sum total of economies and it is uneconomical to operate on the present disjointed basis. ' "Eighth: Thou shalt practise teamwork and not leave all the co-operation to the other fellow. ■ "Ninth: Thou shalt exalt aggressive, far-seeing, eommonsense, courageous leadership. "Tenth: Thou shalt take up the trumpet, and spend money to replace the passive indifference and ill-will which now obsess the mind of the ■public, with active goodwill. "Putting these propositions into a phrase each, here is the formula: (1) Understanding; (2) straight thinking; (3) permanent roduction of hours; (4) maintenance of operatives' earnings; (5) management competency; (6) research; (7) integration; (8) co-opera-tion; (9) leadership; (10) publicity. ""We need a new consciousness in the industry. We need a plan.. We need to teach; to try to play with others; to co-operate, in fact as well as in theory." , .We-.think Mr. Kendall's strictures (comments tho "Bulletin) should not "and need not be confined to the textilo industry.