NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 1929. TRAGEDY IN LANCASHIRE

Northern Advocate, 31 July 1929, Page 4

NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY

WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 1929. TRAGEDY IN LANCASHIRE

Registered for Transmission Through the Post as a Newspaper.

The cabled announcement of a lockout in the Lancashire cotton world cannot but cause grave concern, because if complete stoppage of the looms continues for any length of time, dire disaster must come to a sorely shaken industry. As the “Sydney Morning Herald” said editorially a few days ago, there is no more tragic spectacle in post-war industrial England than the decline of the Lancashire cotton trade. Since 1921 .Lancashire cotton has fallen on evil days. Its great foreign trade has heavily decreased; more than one-third of its machinery has lain idle; most of its operatives, can get little more than 30 hours of work a week; and a large part of the industry isi on the verge of bankruptcy. All that is wanted to complete the ruin, the paper said, is. a large scale strike or lock-out. The result will be a long period of suffering for half a million people and a further blow at art industry which is in . too precarious a plight to endure a prolonged stoppage. For three generations, the biggest minds in the trade worked to put Lancashire cotton on a plane of efficiency such as the world had never seen before. At the beginning of the century, when the world was clamouring for cotton goods, the great machine was perfected, and Lancashire was superbly aware that in all the world there was no real, rival. Then came mere moneygrabbers to reap where others had sown, and a rapid expansion which within a decade made the Lancashire machine so unwieldy that it was easily open to aggression from outside. The war followed and brought, after a period of alarming doubts, the fulness of a great boom to Lancashire. Tales of immense fortunes built on tiny beginnings were whispered abroad, and by the close of the war the cotton world was wallowing in profits. iSlanufacturers. and spinners were inundated with wealth, and there seemed no end to the expansion of dividends. Lancashire was now — nine years ago—on the heights, and the crash was about to come. At first the Lancashire new-rich learned the gentle art of spending, and practised it on a prodigal scale. Plays by Mr Monkhouse and Mr St. John Ervine have ; illustrated their strenuous efforts to “live up to” their recently gotten wealth. Deliberate extravagance soon became boring to most of them as a regular pastime, and the next entertainment was discovered to be even better. This was gambling, and gambling for the highest stakes on an enormous scale. Mostly it took the- form of refloating mills or of recapitalising them, and nearly 400 companies went through reconstruction of either form within 15 months. The whole mad movement was based on expectation of continued swollen profits, and the newly-issued shares became at once a fresh material for gambling. While Lancashire had given itself over to folly the foreigner was preparing his attack, and soon after the opening of the current decade the effect of his growing rivalry, as well as the results of heavy over-capitalisation and all the other sins of demoralised Lancashire, were beginning to make themselves felt. India, Italy, Japan, and the United States had began to develop industries of their own which were becoming rapidly move effective. Lancashire found itself quite" incapable of meeting this situation, and the last few years have seen nothing but the . dwindling of accumulated wealth, the production of yarn and cloth at a loss, no dividends or next to none, endless “arrangements,” moratoria, and bankruptcies, and the growth of panic among the cotton men. Only recently has there been any determined effort to combine resources and make some united effort against the attack from without, and meantime the havoc has inci’eased. Lancashire men have even sold their up-to-date plant at bankruptcy prices to foreign factories, and this is trans- 1

ported overseas and set up to produce goods that are to compete in the markets with those from Lancashire. How far the British Government will allow the lock-out to continue remains to be seen, but Ministerial utterances kindle hope that out of the chaos may come the order which has been greatly needed for a long time past.