THIRTY-HOUR WEEK.

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 12 March 1934, Page 4

THIRTY-HOUR WEEK.

(To .the Editor.)

Sir, —In your editorial on the above subject in your issue of the Bth inst. you say “The theorists in this country have been ready to supply such answers as ‘the workers should receive a share of the benefits conferred by the machine/ but employers who have been working at a loss, or on a small margin, despite their use of modern machinery, have found difficulty in perceiving these benefits at a time when the consumers’ dwindling purchasing power has reduced turnover.” Exactly, .the wages of the machine have no.t been available to the workers, and as the machine has displaced the worker it has also taken away his power to buy the products of the machine, thus we can account for. the “dwindling purchasing power.” The employer who is trying to- make ends meet even with the aid of modern machinery is only a victim of his own organisation. They say .that “private enterprise breeds competition,” and it is this competition; that has crippled private enterprise. Had it .not been, for severe competition the workers could have received a fair portion of the profits of the machine. Instead of the workers receiving any benefit the owners of the machine have used the machine to increase their profits, and these profits have been used to build up vast organisations of mass production. These in turn have had to build up huge superstructures of salesmen and distribution agents, together with extensive advertising, which has swallowed up the greatest portion of the profits of the machine.

As an example, let ns take, the caso of a Hawera tradesman producing a certain article which he retails at £l, and at this figure he is making a profit of 5/-. He finds that at this figure he is getting a very good income, and, of course, he is not the only person who realises this. Consequently a syndicate is formed with the. object of buying this tradesman out and to produce this article in greater quantities and with, the aid of up-to-date machinery to reduce its retail price to 10/-. The lower price is calculated to increase the numbers of customers many times and, although the profit per article has been brought down -to 2/0, this is estimated to. be more than offset by the quantity produced.. The syndicate commences .business, and after a short time they find that the article is not selling at the rate anticipated, and so to overcome this difficulty they begin a campaign of advertising, -which is followed by the appointment of a number of salesmen and distribution agents. This certainly has brought more customers, but on top of the .manufacturing costs has been piled the extra cost of adv-ertisr ing, salesmen and distribution, so that they find that they cannot retail the article at the price of 10/-. Instead they find that with the added costs the article cannot be sold for leas than 25/and make a profit. The ultimate result is that the firm goes out of existence, and the chances arc that the Hawera tradesman cariros on and can make a profit at £l. It has been stated that in a motor car costing 3000 dollars the direct factory labour cost is less than 200 dollars, while it takes 1200 dollars to sell' the car.; that is, about 40 per cent, of the total price. A certain motor accessory contains 35 cents of direct labour. The manufacturer sells it for five dollars and the consumer pays 25 dollars. It will be seen by the above examples that the real profits of the machine, are consumed by what may be termed “expensive methods of obtaining customers,” and until this expensive method of excessive competition in finding customers is abolished the benefits of the machine will neither be received by tlit worker or the consumer —the consumer by reduced prices and the worker by reduced houns. No one can -deny that modern machinery has givm us a method, whereby we can produce things in much less time than we formerly did, but can anyone say that the time saved has reduced the price of the articles produced, or lessened the Lours, of labour in proportion? We know from experience that these benefits have not been conferred on the community and we also know that they cannot under the present competitive system of to-day. We might ask one selves why it is necessary for extensive campaigns of advertising and salesmanship. and the answer might be- supplied by saying that it is a method of forcing the small' available purchasing power out of the -pockets of the people. To make the community buy a given article costs a lot of money, and it is these costs that are crippling the world, to-day.—N-ours, etc., W. H. LEWIS. Turuturu Road, Hawera.