NEED FOR NEW GOLD

Evening Star, Issue 19583, 15 June 1927, Page 11

NEED FOR NEW GOLD

RESTORING THE WORLD'S PROSPERITY

During the course of a recent dinner in London, arranged by the Institute oi Mining and Metallurgy, Sir . Allied Mend, when replying to a toast, said that the world required a now gold inflation. No one who had followed the curves of trade could fail to see that the prosperity of the world had always been in ratio to the discovery of now goldfields. Tho financial aspect of industry was never sufficiently regarded by those persons who seemed to expect trade to improve in sonic miraculous way as by manna dropped from Heaven. People wondered at tho prosperity of America. How much of that prosperity was due. to tho fact that by most ingenious elaboration they had in America mobilised dead credit, and credits which had found no form of expression, and had harnessed them to tho wheels of industry?_ That enabled them to produce a condition of prosperity which, on the authority ol the loading bankers, was likely to remain a permanent factor. We wanted now methods in industry, and we also wanted new methods of finance. ITilo.ss some of the industries get 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 how they could expect to survive the modern competition of Germany and America. “ People,” he continued, “talk a good deal about con!. Romo arc in favor of low carbonisation, and others of high carbonisation. I am 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 tho strike. The average unit production of coke oven plant in this country is 300 ton, 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. Wc can either remain a leader of heroine a. simply a backwater, getting trade after the factories of everyone else are full. Unless wo set our house in order 1 have grayiy fears that this is the lamentable condition at which we shall arrive.”

With regard to the big chemical merger in which lie is a leading_figure, Sir Alfred said that it was a decision which required considerable courage, hut it was a decision which those concerned reached deliberately because they had come 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 tho pooling of brains, finance, technical knowledge, and research. The result had been obvious to anyone with any experience, and in a few months they were obtaining results from the merger which he did not think they would obtain in years. “I will let you into a secret.” ho concluded. “Wo made that whole merger in only six weeks from start to finish. Britain has got to do these things unless wo arc to go under. There is no earthly reason why British industry should not continue to lend, and it will bo our own fault if wo Allow ourselves to descend from the high pedestal on which in the past wo have been placed.”