JAPANESE WAGES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 210, 18 August 1933, Page 5

JAPANESE WAGES

A BRITISH COMPLAINT DISCUSSION AT PACIFIC CONFERENCE. REPLY BY EASTERN DELEGATE. (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Received 18, 11.40 a.m.) 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. Komshichi Takahassi, director of the Takahassi Economic Research Institute, Tokio, declared at a round table conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations today that desperate measures would be forced upon Japan as a means of finding a way out of her dilemma if high tariffs were imposed against Japanese goods because of cheap labour. He said he did not take seriously the complaint that Japan had been dumping her products on foreign markets by virtue of the abnormal drop in the yen exchange, describing this factor of the situation as merely temporary. He declared during an argument respecting cheap labour that unless the situation was clarified the nations of the world would raise their tariffs against Japan even higher than at present. Unless they did so, he contended, they would have to lower their wages and standards of living so as to compete with Japan. “If the Western nations raise tariff barriers on the grounds that Japanese products are cheap because of cheap labour the situation will bo aggravated and the labour cost in Japan must become even cheaper,” said Dr. Taka hassi. “The only solution to the problem is a settlement on a basis of fair play. If the capitalists of Japan harbour the mistaken notion of competing with foreign countries through cheap labour we must first get at the capitalists. At the same time, there is need for British and United States interests to study the question, more thoroughly and not to act on surface indications only.” The discussion indicated that Britain and the United States are the countries most keenly concerned in Japanese industrial production and the living standards of the Japanese worker.