THREE YEARS SHIP PLAN

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 70, 24 March 1933, Page 6

THREE YEARS SHIP PLAN

Plans for creating work by Government Action a,te Leing discussed in Great Britain, and according to the Labour daily newspaper such plans have been referred to by Dominion representatives in the discussions on.restriction of Dominion exports. This report is now under investigation, and need not be further mentioned except to' say in passing that. New. Zealand's own experiments with "large scale work schemes," ■ and also with the numerous small scale work schemes among the grass and weeds, hardly entitles New Zealand experience to become a basis for giving good advice—at any rate, not for giving advice concerning the totally ' different problem of unemployment in industrial Britain. In replying to the debate in the House of Commons, the Chancellor of. the Exchequer, Mr. Chamberlain, while offering an attentive ear to any' works scheme whether Governmental or semiGovernmental, maintained that the prime cause of unemployment was rittt a falling-off of public works but loss of export^ trade. The shipbuilding trade's, plight, and its plea for a Government guarantee, illustrate the truth of the contention that loss of export trade is primarily to blame, and at the. samei time show how careful .the Government will have to be in capital expenditure and in commitments for the future. The shipping constituencies' three years plan for building a million tons of new shipping annually, and for scrapping annually two million tons of obsolete, ships, providing work for 270,000 men, has many attractive features. Yet it is not sufficiently attractive to be financed privately. So the Government is asked to guarantee (up to a limit of seven -millions sterling) that scrapped ships shall bring on sale not less than.2ss a ton, and to back shipbuilders' bills up to half the value of new ships. To form some idea of how desperately shipping and shipbuilding need help, and at the same time, of the danger attendant upon launching a State lifeboat to rescue the storm-tossed, it ,is worth while glancing at recently published figures. Of about 68,000,000 tons deadweight of steam and motor shipping in the world, between 20,000,000 and 22,000,000 tons is laid up. A writer in the "Industrial Australian" states that in 1932 ■ the voyage earnings, of British liners averaged 11s 6d per ton gross; "as the tonnage was valued at an average of £17 per' ton, and as depreciation should have required £1 per ton, there was a net voyage loss of 9s per ton." For cargo companies, treating the figures in the same way, a net loss of 8s 2d per ton_ is estimated. With shipping facing such a position, how is shipbuilding to be revived? Obstacles to any remedial plan are (1) the condition and outlook of shipping as a business, (2) the excessive overbuilding up to and including 1929, and (3) the part played, and still played, by direct Government grants and cheap loans (as in America) for building ships and running shipping services. Neither the trade factor nor the State aid factor can be estimated. A programme of scrapping and building in the ratio of 2 to 1, carried out for three years,' should arrive somewhere, but who can say to what point foreign policies of State aid, and of reserving trades for their own ships, may be carried, especially if the .British Government's proposed guarantee were1 made political use of in foreign Legislatures and lobbies. For argument's sake, advocates of the three years plan assume the worst, and say that if all the shipbuilders defaulted the British Government would only lose about half of. what, it will save in unemployment payments if the estimated 270,000 men rc-cnler industry. In short, the plannisls say: "Accept the lesser evil." But the Government, old in expedients, may prefer to stick to 'the devil it know?.