BRITISH INDUSTRY

Evening Star, Issue 22209, 11 December 1935, Page 9

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 re-cently-published manifesto entitled ‘ The Labour Party’s Call for Power.’ It 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 respect 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 be wounded. Subsidy is the word in general used in connection with Treasury assistance given to ani industry, and there is no need to change it. The charge against the National Government is that it has given “ lavish ” subsidies to one industry after another. It is intended to be conveyed that the Treasury scattered public money with a careless 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. 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. THE HERRING SUBSIDY. In July, 1934, the Treasury provided £35,000 for fitting out herring drifters, and 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 f lavish dole,’ or dp 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 owr capital in a single plant at Billingham-on-Tees. Twelve thousand men were employed in the construction, and it now gives regular employment to 4,000 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 and 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 world-wide—-fall in prices. • , The wheat .scheme costs roughly £6,800,000 a year. Barley has been helped by a Customs duty oil' foreign barleyOats were assisted in the same way, foreign imports being reduced from 7,324,000 cwt in 1931 to 1,257,000 cwt in 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 fpr nine months, 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 these 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 to subsidise various employments indispensable to the well-being of the State. Every country in the world has had to make its choice between subsidy or collapse during the prolonged depression. If they had been State industries the subsidies would have been larger, or, in Mr Attlee’s words, the “doles” would have been more “ lavish.” The large Treasury grants to local authorities for housing purposes are in effect subsidies to the building and allied trades. In this case Socialists complain not that the National Government have given so much, but that they have not given very much more. Yet since the war these Treasury grants have amounted to nearly £1,000,000,000. Housing grants and agricultural subsidies—both are subsidies. Thd common object of them all has been “to improve the lot of, the people.” In very great measure they have succeeded. The plight of tens of thousands would indeed be deplorable if these subsidies had been withheld. STEEL’S RECOVERY. If the Socialists cannot see a “ single constructive step ” in the manifold agricultural experiments which have been undertaken, I wonder what view they take of the tariff policy of the country. The recovery of the iron and steel industry is attributable directly to the tariff. Direct wages in the steel trade were 30 per cent, higher in 1934 than in 1933. There is every prospect of an output for this year of 10,000,000 tons of steel. Iron and steel exports are 15 per cent, higher for the first five months of the year than they were in 1934. The British steel industry, which for long lay at the mercy of the Continental cartel, is now inside the cartel and fully able to hold its own at its councils. Here is a “constructive step,” which Mr Attlee somehow seems to have missed. Thousands who owe their employment to the tariff bless its name. Again, is not a balanced Budget a “constructive step,” and is not a series of such Budgets a solid staircase to prosperity? Is not the maintenance of a cheap money policy a constructive step, and was it not a constructive step of the first magnitude to convert the gigantic 5 per cent. War Loan into a 31 per cent, loan, and at a stroke save the country nearly £30,000,000 interest? Under the National Government a million new houses have been built; the slums are in rapid process of clearance, and 300,000 houses are to be built for the replacement of their occupants. The Overcrowding Act provides new machinery to reduce overcrowded housing conditions by providing flats or houses to be let at about 10s per week, inclusive of rates, _ Still nothing constructive. O myopic Attlee! The whole programme of the Government in , every department has been “ constructive ” and ameliorative, and the British people were never better fed, nor better housed, nor . better clothed than they are to-day. Their health is better, their working conditions are better, their transport is better, their education is better, their recreative opportunities are better. And while the National Government has been engaged on building these constructive steps to prosperity, how has the Socialist Opposition comported itself It has puled and puked in peevish and impotent petulance^