FAIR PLAY FOR JAPAN

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 18 August 1933, Page 5

FAIR PLAY FOR JAPAN

APPEAL MADE BY DELEGATE REPLY TO BRITISH CRITICS. ALLEGATIONS OF DUMPING. LOW WAGE STANDARD. (United Tress Association —By Electric Telegraph Copyright.) Received 11.30 a.m. to-day. BANFF (Alberta), Aug. 17. Dealing with complaints by British members that the low wages paid to textile workers in Japan amounted to illegitimate competition with Lancashire spinners, Dr. Koinschilii Takahassi, Director of the Takahassi Economic Research Institute at Tokio, declared at a round-table conference ol the Institute Pacific Relations to-day that desperate measures would be forced upon Japan as a means of findin or a way out of Jier dilomiiia if lugh tariff's were imposed against Japanese goods, because of cheap labour. He said he did not take seriously the complaint that Japan had been dumping products,in foreign markets by virtue of the abnormal drop of the yen exchange. He described this factor of the situation as merely temporary. He declared, during, an argument respecting cheap labour, that unless the s.tuation were clarified the nations of the world would raise their tariff's aga.nst Japan even higher than at present-. Unless they did so he contended they would have to lower wages and stau”' ards of living so as to compete w.th Japan. “If the Western nations raise tariff barriers on the grounds that Japan ese products are cheap because of cheap labour, the situation will be aggravated and the labour cost in Japan must lx? come even cheaper,” he continued “The only solution of the problem i» a settlement on a basis of fair play. If the capitalists of Japan harbour a mistaken notion of competing with foreign countries through cheap labour, wo must first get at the capitalists. At the same time there is need for Britain and United States interests to study the question more thoroughly ' and not act on surface indications onlv.”

r JPhe discussion indicated that Britain and the United States are countries keenly concerned in Jananese industrial production and tfie living standards of the Japanese worker