WAGE STANDARDS

Evening Star, Issue 22689, 1 July 1937, Page 5

WAGE STANDARDS

INDUSTRIALISATION OF ASIA RESULT SHOULD ENRICH THE WORLD “ That Tokio is nervous concerning the possible effects of aerial warfare is obvious enough. As the local saying has it: It is farther from Japan to Siberia than from Siberia to Japan—by which it implied that, while, in the event of a conflict with Soviet Russia, the vast territories of Siberia would prevent few important targets for Japanese airmen to attack, tho aerodromes of the Soviet Far Eastern air force would be within easy flying range of' Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokio—overcrowded modern cities, no easier to defend from air attack than London or Paris,” writes Mr Hessell Tiltman, in ‘ The Far East Comes Nearer.’ “ If Japan selected the arbitrament of armed might,” he goes on to say, “ won the resultant conflict, and moved her frontier to Lake Baikal, the victory would give her the Far Eastern Republic and clear Soviet Russia put of the Pacific.

“■But it would also leave Japan, established in Eastern Siberia, with a country unsuited for Japanese colonisation on her hands, and an irredentist problem (in the shape of twenty million Communists waging guerrilla warfare against her) beside which tho problem of those ‘ bandits ’ of Manchuria would pale into insignificance. Victory would also create a new common frontier with Soviet Russia along which ‘ incidents ’ would multiply until a further explosion blew it out of existence.”

British readers, however, will be interested in his summary of the trade situation, for Japan’s industrial competition is being felt by ail the natipns. “Japan Jm been helped enormously by the modernisation of her factories carried out without any regard for vested interests, and by the skill and discipline of her admirable workers,” says Mr Tiltman. . “ But, when all allowance lias been made for that fact, it remains true that she has been assisted even more by what has been termed the ‘ rice standard ’ —that is, by the simple standard of life to which the Japanese are, as a race, accustomed. It is this factor, entirely new in tho competition between industrial nations, which accounts for many of the charges made against Japan, and for many of the fears entertained elsewhere. 4s the Federation of British Industries put it, in a recent'report;. “‘ln plain words, unless rice' is made equivalent to beef, the beef standard will cease to exist so far as many industries are concerned.’

“ Precisely. What 'is the solution of that problem? For if the British worker is entitled to his meat dish once a d'ay, the Japanese worker is equally entitled to the bowl of rice which is his preference.' It would be unreasonable to expect Japan to introduce a Western wage standard into her factories without regard to national habits and needs. What is a ‘ Western standard,’ anyway? The scale of real wages in Japan is already equivalent to that in Italy 'or Poland—two European nations which are, from the point of view of labour conditions, most backward.

“The ‘trade war’? Japan’s industrial! expansion is but one phase, although the most striking phase, of the industrialisation of the East which has been proceeding steadily for the past 20 years,” says Mr Tiltman, in a later chanter. “ The same process is proceeding in China also. “ To-day the Chinese are,threatening the Japanese cotton industry with the very fate which the Japanese have meted out to Lancashire. The Chinese mills are already very serious rivals to Japan in supplying piece goods to the East Indies, especially to: the large Chinese communities there. With China becoming steadily more industrialised. the world is within measurable" distance of cheap production in excelsis. Japan’s industrialists may, however, he left to ponder that problem.

“ Taking the long view, the industrialisation of Asia may well prove of benefit to the world. The resultant increase in purchasing power and the elimination of squalor in that continent will provide new markets sufficjent to recompense the Western nations for the trade that has ‘ gone east.’ In the future the real Eastern markets will be for such commodities as wheat, rice, foodstuffs, cotton, and raw _ materials for the factories, and specialised machinery rather than for manufactured products. “ Just as Japan is changing the territorial map of Asia, so her industrialists are redrawing the trade maps of the whole earth. The challenge of the Japanese factories is an acid test for Britain’s industries. There will inevitably be changes even more sweeping than thos© which aro now* history. But there have heen changes comparatively as violent in this country in the past. All the distressed areas in Britain to-day are not duo to the wicked Japanese ’! Once the transitional stage is over, and each nation is making its maximum contribution to the health, wealth, and happiness of mankind, the. result will enrich and not impoverish the world Meanwhile, Japan is keeping her teeming populations employed and her machinery busy; those who'are infuriated by those facts should consider the alternative solution to that jiopulation problem, which would be large-scale Japanese migration overseas. To Australia, for instance.”-