BOOKS

Northern Advocate, 17 December 1938, Page 3 (Supplement)

BOOKS

By “Caxt

A Book Chambers Of Commerce Might Circulate “Brush Up Your Business”

Getting Value for Salaries and Wages By Herbert N. Casson. (Efficiency Magazine Publication. 5/- net in England.) He that observeth the wind will not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. Dismissing, therefore, for the time being, dreams of a new order coming up over the horizon, and dealing with things as they very much are, in the present order, this book has a lot of sound stimulating good sense comment to offer on the improvement of relations between employer and employees. The New Technique Casson must run a close race with Culbertson in the copious exploitation of his' particular subject. Already to his credit there is a small library of books on business from

efficiency point of view. This new work has the same brisk engaging style we met in “Salesmanship,” “The I Twelve Worst Mistakes in Business,”, and “Twelve Tips to Travellers.” (There is an apostolic flavour about his number.) “Getting Value,” the latest, is announced as a “New Technique of Employership,” and said to be an answer to the practical question—- “ Every week you pay salaries or wages. What do you get in return? Soulless Control ! This book will supply a need. Indeed it would be worth circulating among business people, if Chambers of Commerce would like sometimes to do a little helpful work in their own preeminent line. The old order changeth. New occasions teach new duties. The close in-

! timate relations of employer and om- , ployee that hold good in most business i houses sixty years ago. have been i shouldered out by companies and i trusts, big department stores and chain

Ho has some pointed counsel for employees. They by no means escape his efficiency lash. Here are some quotations: Mistakes and Correction “An employee has the right, we might say, to make a mistake ONCE.

(shops, in some of which however, the i relation between principals and staff is ideal. The recently published life of Whitely, “The Universal Provider.” discloses a London pioneer of the big store, a quite remarkable business genius, but an employer who never got the best out of his employees. He badly needed a Casson course. He would have lived longer, probably. He I was a harsh, suspicious and repressive | dictator. A little more human feeling might have saved his life when a young man got into his office to appeal for redress of injustice and replied to a disdainful rejection of his appeal by shooting him dead. To say “serve him right” would be cruel, but, at the time, it was said, and that’s the point. Casson aims to eliminate the bad feeling that breeds such intolerance. to eliminate the danger of a soulless inhuman control in modern management. And he makes the point, also, that it pays to restore good feeling between employers and employees. A speaker at the Whangarei branch of Rotary mentioned recently the number of firms in England that were giving their employees rest periods for morning tea, and their discovery that better work and more of it resulted from their consideration. It is interesting to note what Casson says: •

The ablest of us make mistakes once, To keep on making the same mistake —that is what is inexcusable." Of correction he says: “Praise publically but correct in private.” Of managers encouraging by giving responsibility: “A good manager musl be a good delegator. It is not his job to push at the wheels, but to sit in the driver’s seat—to direct, instruct, organise, plan and create.” “If I were an employee, I think I would give a thought now and then to what I owed my employer. Instead of having the silly Bolshevistic idea that my eihployer was exploiting me—making profits out of me —I would think of what he is doing for me.” » The Employer’s Seven Troubles “The man who has most troubles in these worrying days is not the wageearner. nor the clerk, nor the lawyer, nor the policeman. No —the man who has the most troubles is the employer.” Mr Casson gives seven pungent reasons why this is so. of which No. 1 is: “He has most obligations. He is compelled to carry on. He can’t ‘down tools’ or live on doles.” No. 5 is brief, but arresting: “He has never had so few rights and so many risks.” No. 6 is often too true: “He is pinched between his customers, his workers, his banker and the Government.”

Five-Day Week Loss or Gain “There are now 750 British firms that are making an experiment with the five-day week. It is said that the health of the workers is improved. There is less absenteeism and the output has not seriously suffered. In some cases the output has increased.” These firms have a total list of 140,000 employees. “One firm employing 500, gave a ten minute rest period in the middle of the morning and another in the middle of the afternoon. A 5 per cent, decrease in output was expected. To its surprise there, was' a 5 per cent. INCREASE in output.” (The capitals are Casson’s.)

There is food for some thinking in this last quotation I offer. The author is dealing with the value of good talk, and the large amount of “customerlosing talk.” He thinks it has been a neglected branch of training. “Not one of us holds a diploma as a skilled conversationalist. Some of us know the art of efficient conversation. But most of us do not. As a means of keeping customers it is, in my opinion, superior to advertising.” * • • 9 The Atlas of To-day and To-morrow, by Alexander Rado, F.R.G.S., the maps by M. Rajchman. (Gollahcz 1938, 10/6 net).

On this Casson comments: “This is what almost always happens. There is no surer, cheaper or pleasanter way of increasing the output than by giving the employees a couple of breaks during the day. When employees work four hours at a stretch, they slow down and often do bad work in the last hour. Why are there so many Works Managers who do not know this? With malice towards none, the question might be extended to engineers and local bodies in New Zealand. Mutual Improvement Ideas The book teems with ideas, such as the Junior Board of Directors, which the McCormick Company proved to be a fertile innovation, enabling co-op-eration between old and young and training of the young in higher responsibilities. Like Dale Carnegie, Casson has a rich and ready fund of instances at command. It is a book of facts as well as theories.

This book of 209 maps and 93 pages of detailed information is an invaluable work of exhaustive research and masterly arrangement. It offers a compact handy form, too big for the pocket, of course, but not too bulky to hold easily in the hand, or pop into a handbag when travelling. The maps are not in colour, ,but in clearly defined shadings of black and white. The cost of such a production in colour would have run into nearly as many pounds as the present price in shillings. The average man and woman is world minded to-day. The radio has helped to develop this world consciousness. So has the constantly disquieting news of wars, rumours of war, and the inflammatory gestures and speeches of dictators swollen with power. We live in a time when the fear of war enters every home almost daily. No nation, no people can say we are too far off, it won’t touch us. Because what is happening to-day in Europe, America or China may involve us to-morrow. We are interested in world news, world events and world movements.

The news of what is going on in other countries is assuming more importance and urgency than our local and national news. We look for it in cables and listen for it over the air with undenied interest, sometimes amounting to serious concern. But the news comes from so many quarters, involves so many new and changing factors in world relations that we are all hard put to understand it. We want a handy master key to open some of the doors that bewilder us. Here it is. Not another atlas in the ordinary meaning of the word, with static physical features, oceans, moun-

tains, rivers, coastlines, cities and so

forth, but an atlas that fills the outlines of physical geography with marshalled facts and features of the racial, currency, political, industrial and economical movements and tendencies of to-day and to-morrow.

i The divisions under which the j atlas is presented are six: (1) The j Struggle for the Division of the j World. 1875 (when “modern history ! may be said to have begun”) to the I League of Nations; (2) The Great | Powers and Colonial Empires, a fas--1 cinating story of expansion—and conflict; (3) The Struggle for World Markets, dealing with everything that is carried between one country and another, from wheat to diamonds (I turned up the excellent and ready index to see how r New Zealand stood among the seventeen chief,butter producing Remembering qur Northland cinnabar deposits, I also turned up the mercury table of world I production; but of these later, if space ■holds out); (4) The Struggle lor the| Control of Communications; (3) State, j Nationality, Religion and Race (beginning with Nationality Problems in Europe, down to the Jews, Negro Prob* lem and Islam, an absorbing section in the present world commotion); and (6) State and Society (from Industrialism through National Incomes and Political Freedom to “The Struggle of Ideologies). This last heading in section 209 again induced special reference, and proved a marvel of compressed analysis. It is profoundly interesting to see the prevailing forms of government in the world set out under their various labels, Parliamentary, Socialist, Fascist, Soviet, etc. The table of millions under the various ideological labels was not too pleasant reading with “Fascist, semi-Fascist or other authoritarian forms, 313 millions of inhabitants.” j

The author of this work, Alexander Rado, is a distinguished geographical authority, who studied at the Universities of Budapest, Vienna, Jena and Liepzig. He is a fnember of London, Paris, Berlin and Budapest Geographical Societies; and Editor of Atlases and Geographical Encyclopaedias. This, and the eminent standing of Gollancz, the publishers, establish the confidence necessary to feel at home under the author’s guidance through a maze of facts and figures quite beyond the ordinary man to test for himself.

I found no reference to New Zealand in the table of mercury producing countries. Nor could it be expected. The deposits are here in Northland, but powerful financial interests have arrested and controlled their development. Italy and Spain are given as the chief producing countries. The author notes that these two countries “formed the European Mercury Convention in 1928, which came to an understanding with the Mexican exporters, so that it controlled 70 per cent., of the’ output and all the world trade in mercury. Spain withdrew in 1936” he says, “and the Cartel was thus dissolved.” In the table he gives for 1935, the United States rank third in production, Spain being highest and Italy next. In the text he refers to the United States as “the greatest producers, they are also the greatest importers of mercury/' The Soviet Union of Russia is mentioned as the only country able to supply its own needs. The mote on mercury is worth quoting. It illustrates the author’s flexible powers of compression. “As mercury is the only metal that remains liquid at a normal' temperature, it is chiefly used in the making of instruments for scientific measurement. It is particularly important in the armament industry as it is used to produce fulminate of mercury, a high explosive irreplaceable for detonators in blasting operations and for cartridges, for bullets and projectiles.” ,

New Zealand ranks seventh in the table of butter-producing countries. Canada following, not far behind. The Irish Free State is a long way back, and the United Kingdom helow Ireland. The United States heads the list, Russia next, then Germany. France, Australia and Denmark, in that order. It is noted that the Soviet surplus, available for export, grows less as home consumption is on the increase. Germany imports about a sixth of the butter she requires. The Trade Market Map, at page 85, and the information about the chief

trade markets of the world, facing the

map, on page 84. furnished valuable information, with population figures at the beginning of 1937. New York heads the list as the world's largest city, with 6,930 thousand people, Tokyo comes next with 5,876, and London third, with 4,397." In brackets, how-

ever. the author states that London, as defined for police administration, has a population of 8,203 thousands of inhabitants,” which is more generally known, of course, as Greater London. Sydney, on this list, drops happily into the nineteenth hole. A pleasant lubricative coincidence perhaps! ... '