BRITISH INDUSTRY

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 133, 2 December 1935, Page 11

BRITISH INDUSTRY

REVIVED BY SUBSIDIES

THOUSANDS BACK AT WORK

RESULTS SUMMARISED

~ "Whilst doles of varying kinds have been dispensed on a lavish scale to industry after industry, not a single constructive step has been taken to improve the lot of the people."

I take my text—to borrow the phraseology of the pulpit—from the recently-published manifesto entitled "The Labour Party's Call for Power." Jt carries Mr. Attlee's signature (writes J. B. Firth in the "Daily Telegraph").

A scrupulous impartiality of statement is not expected from an election manifesto. But there are limits to what is permissible in l-espect of unveracity. Those who subscribed their names to the sentence which I have quoted" must, as honourable men, have shut their eyes before they signed.

-Let us see what these "doles" are and to what industries they have been dispensed. "Dole," of course, is an invidious word chosen in order to create prejudice.

■Socialists object to its application to unemployment relief, and even the word relief has been changed to assistance, so that sensitive feelings may not ba wounded. Subsidy is the word in general used in connection with Treasury assistance given to an industry, and there is no need to change it.

The charge against the National Government is that they have given "lavish" subsidies to one industry after another. It is intended to be conveyed that the Treasury scattered public money with a careles hand. That is easily said, and can be as readily disproved.

There is only one subsidy against which a charge of undue generosity might possibly be supported, and that is the sugar beet industry. Its cost last year was £2,878,000, and the Government, after carefully considering the report of the Greene Commission, decided to.limit the acreage on which the subsidy shall be paid.

But they upheld the principle of the subsidy, because of the valuable employment it provides for British labour, because its abandonment would reduce large tracts of East Anglia to ruin, and because there is no other branch of agriculture to which the beet growers could turn with reasonable hope of making profit. DUE TO SNOWDEN. It is, perhaps, worth mention that the beet sugar subsidy was introduced by that eminent Socialist, Lord Snowden, when he was at the Exchequer, and is his one creative effort that has survived. Let me turn to the other subsidies granted by the National Government: XHE HERKING SUBSIDY. In July, 1934, the Treasury provided £35,000 for fitting out herrjng drifters, arid a Herring Industry Board was established with power to borrow up to £1,000,000 and make advances for reconstructing boats, buying nets, and purchasing redundant vessels. All I ask is: "Do the fishermen round the coasts deserve this 'lavish dole,' or do they not?" OIL FROM COAL. The National Government has guaranteed a preference of 4d per gallon on British oil produced from British coal by the new hydrogenation process.

•On that condition a great. British industrial company, after spending vast sums on experiments, was ready to invest another million of its own capital in a single plant at Billingham-on-Tces. Twelve thousand men were employed in the construction, and it now gives regular employment to 4000 men who would otherwise be unemployed. A new industry has been created by this "lavish dole." Is that good or bad? ' THE SHIPPING SUBSIDY. -The National Government agreed to subsidise tramp shipping to the extent of £2,000,000 during 1935, and to adVance £10,000,000 during the next two years on a "scrap-and-build scheme." Old tramp steamers, that is to say, are to be replaced by a smaller tonnage of up-to-date new ships. ■•: As a result, more British tramps are in commission than at any time since September, 1932. The number still laid up is the lowest since January, 1930. Again, ought we to be sorry or glad? , THE QUEEN MARY SUBSIDY. -The Government also provided financial assistance up to £5,000,000 for the completion of the Queen Mary and another new ship or ships, on condition that the Cunard and White Star companies entered into a merger to prevent wasteful competition. ' The direct result has been that £3,000,000 has been spent- in wages on the Clyde and elsewhere in completing arid fitting out the Queen Mary alone. Again, ought the Clydesiders to be thankful or not? TRANSPORT ELECTRIFICATION SUBSIDY. .. The Treasury has guaranteed a loan for raising approximately £40,000,000 for schemes of electrification in the area of the London Transport Board. Tens of thousands of Londoners will be enabled to get to and from their work in less time and in greater comfort. This wicked "lavish dole" to a capitalistic undertaking may be repeated in other great centres of population. Socialists, despite Mr. Attlee, call for it louder than any. The taxpayer will not be mulcted one halfpenny. The travelling public will benefit. Where is the crime? • AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES. According to the Socialists, the National Government has been busily pouring public money into the pockets of the landlords. What it has actually done has been to grant assistance to different branches of agriculture in turn, in order to prevent the complete collapse with which they were threatened by the heavy—and worldwide—fall in prices. -The wheat scheme costs roughly £6,800,000 a year. . Barley has been helped by a Customs duty on foreign barley. Oats were assisted in the same way, foreign imports being reduced from 7,324,000cwt in 1931 to 1,257,000cwt ir 1934. The beef industry was helped by a subsidy of 5s per cwt (live weight) to British producers of fat cattle. The cost of the extended subsidy for nine month 3, from October to next June, is estimated at £3,000,000. Payments under the milk scheme cost the Treasury £2,115,000. WHO BENEFITS? Here is, admittedly, a remarkable change of policy for a country which by tradition dislikes subsidies. But who has benefited? Mainly labour, in the form of employment and wages. Farmers have been enabled to carry on who otherwise must have gone bankrupt, and whose labourers would have lost their employment.

The suggestion that thess subsidies have undeservedly enriched the industries concerned is ludicrous. They were threatened with imminent ruin, and the subsidies saved them. Landlords have only benefited to the extent that if their tenant farmers had become bankrupt their rents would not have been paid.

What the grants have done has been