IS BRITAIN AWAKE?

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 13 February 1933, Page 10

IS BRITAIN AWAKE?

YES, SAYS LORD DERRY FACTORIES’ EARLY START “Will tiie liritisli manufacturer justify ail th(! talking anil writing ami parleying which has been undertaken on his behalf? Personally l fun convinced that, he will not let his defenders down. Thus writes the Eight lion, the Earl of Derby, in a statement circulated by the Press officer of the British Industries Fair. Lord Derby’s evidence is a tonic for those Empire-lovers who work lor the Empire, mournfully in a belief that the British manufacturer is a sound sluntberer, instead of working for the Empire confidently in the knowledge that the manufacturing policy ol Britain is backed by brains as shrewd as any in either America or Europe. The British mills are responding to new situations, and Lord Derby is convinced that “if the consuming public does not gain considerably it will be no fault of the British manufacturer. 1 write more immediately of the textile manufacturer, but I know that what is true of textiles is true ol British industries in general. “While others wore working to clear the way British textile manulacturers were planning to meet the new demands. Without waiting for the conclusion of the negotiations which have been and are still going on, some ol our manufacturers have been winning back trade believed to have been lost. At the White City, London, next February, they will show in the textiles section of the British Industries hair how attentively they have been studying the needs of their markets.

“Next year’s textiles exhibition will he even larger than the last, and the displays of cotton, silk, wool, rayon, and linen will in most eases be based upon, recent first-hand market investigations by the lnanuiacturers concerned.

' “Take, for example, China where the. present boycott of Japanese goods has given Lancashire her chance. Tho scouts of our cotton industry noted and at once reported the growing tendency on the part of Chinese women to adopt a European style of dress. Immediately suitable materials were made up inlo attractive frocks and shipped East, and the result of mannequin parades in Hongkong, Shanghai, Singapore, Manila, Java, Bangkok, and elsewhere had already brought real grist to northern mills.

“There \VO have an example ol Lancashire’s part in the British Industries Fair. The ladies themselves cannot come from the East to the White City, but those who sell to them can; and from all accounts they are going to arrive in strength to see the new materials fashioned into novel styles to attract their custom.”

The development of the production of furnishing fabrics affords “further and almost sensational evidence of the readiness with which our manufacturers are responding to the new opportunities being created for them.” During the past six or seven years the business of making furnishing fabrics had gradually dwindled, and it was no easy problem suddenly to supply orders with which mills, for long working precariously, found themselves overwhelmed. At a moment’s notice old methods and old ideas had to he scrapped ; new methods and new machinery had to be. studied and introduced. And again hundreds of samples of Jacquard fabrics have been sent to our mills and after many experiments they are now being beautifully woven here in Britain. “Scotland was not slow to realise the possibilities of awakening trades, and there looms for long idle wore at once adapted to the' production of this new market, particularly in linen and in jute; indeed, before some of her competitors well knew what was happening, Scotland had outstripped them for both quality and price. “I am assured that this vigorous spirit of enterprise is to he noted not only in Lancashire, in Yorkshire, and in Scotland, but in every corner of Britain where they spin or weave. I believe it to bo symptomatic of British industry as a whole.” "'•".rm