SHORTER WEEK AND FOREIGN COMPETITION.

Evening Star, Issue 21715, 9 May 1934, Page 14

SHORTER WEEK AND FOREIGN COMPETITION.

, TO THE EDITOU. tli r ,—The New Zealand Welfare League has laised the bogey of Japan’s ■‘long hours ami poor pay ” against, the shorter-hour week, with higher costs of manufacture if this is brought about. Why has Japan’s trade become such a menace to countries like New Zealand? Not because of her long hours of work so much as the fact that she has millions of workers continually employed, while most other countries have allowed a <aeat proportion of their workers to be “idle, with practically no spending power above their necessaries. The league fads to sec that good wages arc noccssarv to everybody's interest if they want to"sell the goods the machine can luni out in swell abundance. If the people bad wages that could buy New Zealand-made goods at a reasonable price there would bo no need to import a cheaper article from countries where the hours of work are long and the wages low, but where the spending power of a country is lowered it has to buy the cheapest article. How are shorter hours to become universal if nobody makes a move, but is waiting to see what the other one is doing first;-' If the increased cost to the manufacturer is going to be the stumbling block on the issue of shorter hours and higher wages, how does he view the increased prices m the cost of living to the worker, whose wages never get beyond a hare living? The New Zealand Welfare League has as much intelligence- as most of us, and knows quite well that shorter hours and higher wages will have to come before trade eaif pick up again, and it is no good putting off the day because other countries won’t start first in this reform. There are two alternatives: one is to let things slide as they are at present, with poor sales and goods mounting up. or employ more labour and have quicker and steadier sales with smaller profits. The workers could do with three times the amount ol food and clothing they are getting at present, but the Government would rather dump the so-called surplus in other countries than plan so that the men and women In their own country could buy them I am. etc., ADVOCATE. ,Mnv >J.