The Hawera Star. WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 1925. TWO VIEWS OF CAPITALISM.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 29 July 1925, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 1925. TWO VIEWS OF CAPITALISM.

Delivered every evening by 5 o’clock *o Havvera, Manaia Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatnki, Kaponga, Alton, Hurleyvilic, Patea, Waverley, Mokoia, Wnakamara, Ohangai. Meremere, Fraser Road, an Ararat*.

The personal intervention of the British Prime Minister in the mining dispute, while it holds out some prospect of a peaceful settlement, serves also to emphasise the gravity of the immediate outlooh. And that gravity consists not only in the d,anger of a, further big industrial upheaval, with the suffering which would follow in its train and the bitterness it would engender, ( but also in the inevitable further weakening of Great Britain’s position among the manufacturing countries of the world. Very timely, then, is an article contributed by Mr E. T. Good to a. recent number of the Spectator, under the heading ‘‘.The American Example: No ‘Ca’ Canny’ and no Socialism.” American industrial organisation may not. be perfect; but the American example of how high "wages can be combined with cheap production is a lesson to the world —a lesson which it. might pay some British countries to learn. Says Mr Good: ‘‘American Labour thrives while British Labour agitates. In America they work. Here [in Britain] we talk.” The British Labour champion may possibly retort that in many industries in America they still work nine and ten hours a day. So they do. But these same workers drive their private ears, take their summer holiday, and put substantial savings into “corporation” bonds. Are they so very much worse off than their British fellows, eking out an existence on strike pay or the dole? To quote again: “In America they have highly developed Capitalism, assisted by industrious and willing Labour. The workmen support Capitalism in two ways: They operate industrial machinery up to its limits, and they invest, in the companies that employ them.” To the really rabid British Labour-Socialist this will appear as rank treachery. The British creed is to have no truck with Capitalism; the American practice is to work in with it. That greatest of American Labour leaders, the late Mr Samuel Gompers, used to say that in liis country workmen were not Socialists, and did not believe in restriction of output; and Mr Good tells us that the trade unions of the United States “do not specially design their rules and policy to hinder production and make tilings scarce.’’ The position boils down to "this: British Labour, in a more or less hesitant and half-hearted attempt to end the capitalist regime, has succeeded in slowing down the machinery of industry to such an extent that neither masters nor men are prospering, while every week the country is falling further behind her manufacturing competitors. American Labour, on the other hand, being content t,o take Capitalism as it is, has cooperated actively with it—and is forging ahead. Possibly our trans-Pacific cousins have taken the narrow and selfish view; but. again, possibly they have not. If, for example, it is going to bo for the good of the world’s workers to set up the kingdom of Socialism, America is not striving towards that goal. But if, on the other hand —and the one supposition is as strong as the other —if Socialism be not the wonderful economic panacea which some would have, us believe, how foolish', how suicidal, is all this crying for the moon in Britain! It is not necessary to dig very deeply to find, how the present positions of wage-earners in the two countries compare. Let Mr Good give the facts: — Cost of living in New York State is 80 per cent, higher than before the. war, as with ourselves; but average wages in that State are 120 per cent, above pre-war. That is due to increased output. Tlio increased output dags not mean that work is that much harder, but that American labour manipulates machinery with economy, and at its full capacity, with, the result that employers are encouraged to adopt the best machinery and methods. They know that their workmen will not. “slow-time” ttie machinery. .They know that trade unions will not insist upon fully apprenticed men being employed to mind simple repetition machines. In America engineers make machines; they do not claim the right to mind them when they are made. Wages paid by the United States Steel Corporation, or Trust, as it is called, have averaged. 22s per worker per day in the last two years. The average in the British iron and steel industry has been 10s.

At first glance the comparative earnings of coal miners in the two countries .scorns to furnish an argument for the union’s side in the present, crisis at Home. American miners have in the last two years averaged just about £8 per man-week, whilst British miners have averaged, about £2 15s. But that is only half the story. Thanks to big output per unit of labour, the United States enjoys cheap coal ns well as high mining wages. Forty years ago Britain produced twenty-five ewt. of coal per man shift, and America produced thirty cwt. That, it is claimed by experts, fairly represented the difference in natural conditions. To-day Britain’s tally is only seventeen and alialf cwt. per man-shift, and America’s nearly eighty ewt. These figures show what can be done by Capital and Labour, on the one hand at daggers drawn, and on the other working in close harmony and co-operation. They show as well—all too plainly—what a millstone is hanged about the neck of British manufacturing industries.