POSITIVE WORLD MENACE’

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 22 April 1935, Page 9

POSITIVE WORLD MENACE’

JAPAN’S TRADE COMPETITION FIGHT WITH LANCASHIRE MILLS AUSTRALIA IX CLEFT STICK

Saying that in his opinion Japan constituted a world’s menace to trade, and that the only way —an impracticable j wa y—to meet the competition was for the whole world to blackball her, Mr J. G. Gilbert-Lodge, governing director of the company that bears his name in London, gave in an interview at .Christchurch some alarming details of the threat that Japan is offering. The oldfashioned Lancashire mills, he said, had to face thoroughly modern Japanese plants; and Australia, which had a favourable trade balance jvith Japan, was in a cleft stick, because Japanese purchases of wool had put the Commonwealth on her feet, and 4S .per cent, oi the goods from the East did not clash with Australian products. "To understand the position you have to go back to the time when Lancashire had the world at her feet,” said Mr Gilbert-Lodge, "and the competition she is now receiving from Japan is the first real competition she has ever had in the cotton world. "The Japanese have these advantages over tho Lancashire mills; the Japanese, mills are starting where the rest of the world left off —they have the best possible machinery; the labour conditions are such that under the present sterling value of the yen (Is 2d) a Japanese skilled worker is paid Is Od a day of 10 hours, and the girl in the factory is paid 8d a day of 10 honrs, and she handles double tliej looms or spindles her offsider handles in Lancashire; Japan is just as modernised commercially as she is mechanically. Whereas in Lancashire there are half-a-dozen self-contained departments, each one of which does not care a hoot how the others are getting on, in Japan there is a governing department, tho sole purpose of which is to see the whole process of manufacture from the raw material to the finished product. The various processes are synchronised, the whole object being to put the goods on the market at competitive prices f.o.b.

"For 1933, the total Japanese exports of everything, to every country in the world, increased by 73 per cent, over 1932, and I was amazed on going into the figures at the increasingly large number of things Japan makes, and the increasingly large number of countries they are going into.

MARKET FOR ANYTHING "In n;y opinion Japan can get a market for anything she wants, in any country in the ■world-, when she wants it. I look upon Japan as a positive world’s menace, and no individual country can tackle her—the only way you can meet that is for the whole world to blackball her, and that is not practicable.

"So far as Australia is concerned, she is in a cleft stick with Japan for this reason: In 3933 the balance of trade in. favour of Australia was £17,000,000 and in 1934 it was from £9,500,000 to £10,000,000 in favour of the Common-' wealth. Japan is naturally saying ‘What about it?’ Australia will have to buy more goods from Japan, or Japan will transfer her purchases to some other country. "In 1934, of the total wool exports fro'm Australia, Great Britain took 29 per cent, and Japan 23 per cent.; and of the wheat Japan took 19 per cent, of the total exports. Of the goods sent to Australia from Japan 48 per cent, arc goods that do not compete with products of - local manufacture.. It was Japan’s purchases of wool in 1932 and 1933 that enabled Australia to got back on to her feet.

“The average dividend paid by the textile mills of Japan is 1G per cent. The trouble with the Lancashire mills has: been that because of their having the monopoly there was no warranty for them to modernise their plant. “At the annual meeting last November of Platt Bros., Oldham, the chairman of directors said that one of the reasons why Japan was able to compete so successfully with the Lancashire mills was because the Lancashire mills had not modernised the plant and put in any new machinery for over 20 years. He said lie was quite prepared to meet a delegation of interested people in Lancashire and prove what lie said, and he did. I don’t, know of one cotton-mill in Lancashire, that has not a rope drive.”