THE ECONOMIC POSITION

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 28 August 1919, Page 5

THE ECONOMIC POSITION

BRITAIN CAN BE SAVED ONLY BY GREATER PRODUCTION.

GOVERNMENT CUTTING DOWN EXPENDITURE. STATEMENT BY MR LLOYD GEORGE. BY CABLE—PEEBB ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT LONDON, Aug. 26. Mr Brownlie, chairman of the Amalgamated Engineers, has written to Mr liowerman, the Parliamentary secretary of the Trades Union Congress, drawing attention to the grave national situation. He says that onlyincreased production can avert the chaos. The trade unionists cannot evade their responsibilities to the community, and the Labor leaders must endeavor to alleviate the situation. Merely increasing wages, without increasing production, will not serve. Mr Bowerman admits the seriousness of the situation, and says that trade unionists must concentrate to ensure increased outgut. He will circularise the Congress Committee with a view to congress taking action. The Admiralty has suspended the construction of sixty large cruisers, destroyers, and submarines in twenty shipbuilding yards. An expert committee is considering whether the ships should be broken up or the hulls completed with a view to conversion to mercantile purposes, for which mamy of the smaller craft are suitable LONDON, Aug. 27. The suspension of naval construction ! work on the Clyde affects 10,000 workers, of whom 8000 will be immediately absorbed in building merchantmen. The construction of a new superairship at Inchinnon has been suspended. Mr Lloyd George, in a letter to his colleagues, dated August 20, urges the immediate cutting down of expenditure, for which there is strong feeling in the House of Commons, the press, and the country. The time, he states, has arrived for each Minister to impress on the heads of the various branches of the administrative departments that if they cannot reduce expenditure they must make room for somebody who can. Everything in excess of what is indispensable to sound administration must be cut down.

The Cabinet's Finance Committee's scheme for the reorganisation of Treasury control over State expenditure establishes three departments within the Treasury, imder controllers, to deal respectively with the establishment's supply services and general administration.