NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17708, 17 February 1921, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE SWISS WATCH INDUSTRY.

Unemployment in the watch industry in Switzerland has seriously increased, says a recent report. Several important factories of cheaper watches have dismissed most of their workmen, and factories for the manufacture of watch parts have closed down. The Nationalbank refuses to finance production for stock, judging the stocks in the country to be already too large. This crisis is by no means caused by the existence of any cheap foreign oomfetition, but is due to the exhaustion of uying power in many countries. Curiously enough, very expensive first-class gold and platinum watches are stili fairly well sold abroad, and it is chiefly the cheaper good average Swiss watch which finds no buyers.

A COSTLY RIFLE RANGE. The principal purpose of Sir Heaton Rhodes' visit last week to Invercargill was to inspect the rifle range there, and also the new and the old drill hall. The Minister assured a deputation that his department intended to complete the range. Commenting on this decision, the Otago Daily Times says the Minister hinted that an additional expenditure of some thousands of pounds would be necessary if the reclamation was to be wholly faced with stone. It would be of interest to the taxpayers if they were told the amount which has already been expended on this particular work. If it be the case, as has been rumoui-ed, that the department has been committed to an expenditure of something between £30,000 and £40,000 in the formation of the range, it will be readily understood that there is a great deal of cause for an inquiry into the whole matter. _ The range, when completed, will consist of reclaimed ground, but, as far as we can learn, the plan recommended by the Public Works Department was abandoned in favour of another plan which involved a heavily increased expenditure. The transaction assumes an even graver aspect if it be the fact, as has been suggested, that when the work has been completed the property will be found to be entirely unsuitable for the purposes of a rifle range! That there has been a distinct waste of public money over the business, as there was also over the erection of a new drill hall at Invercargill, seems to be fairly certain.

SEAMEN'S "JOB CONTROL." Representatives of the Australian Seamen's Union have asserted that they are fighting a shipowners' " combine," but their K job control" demands extend t) the manning of the Commonwealth Government line of steamers as welL In this connection the manager for Australia of the Commonwealth Government line, Mr. Eva, has published a statement, which shows how the seamen have held up ship after ship to enforce demands in excess of the provisions of the Navigation Act or of awards or agreements. This statement gives 13 instances of " job control" on Government-owned vessels. The first occurred in October, 1919, when the crew of the Boorara refused to work unless three extra trimmers were granted. The. ship was delayed for 17 days, the demand being finally conceded under protest. Nearly every other case was of the same character—a demand for three trimmers, the ship delayed' for as long as two months, and then the management gave way under protest. In one case, the men made demands concerning the work of the deck boy. This matter was adjusted, but at the next port the crew refused to abide by the arrangement, and! the vessel was delayed 10 days. "It is only necessary to add," says Mr. Eva, " that all the vessels of the Commonwealth Government line mentioned were manned not only in accordance with the Navigation Act, but in many cases in excess of legislative requirements thus leaving no justification whatever for the stand-and-deliver attitude adopted by officials of the Seamen'B Union."

THE DEFLATION OF PRICES. . Discussing the probable developments from the present period of financial stringency and stagnation of trades, the December review by Barclay's Bank, LtcL, Bays :—" We have to remember that conditions during the past few years have at bottom been extremely unhealthy. They have been based on reduced production, wasteful consumption, lessened savings, and a plethora of inconvertible paper money. With prices stabilised, development work will become more possible, while one of the chief causes of uneasy politics and social unrest will be removed. Wage-earoere v ill obtain a real increase in wages, while, if profits are expressed in lower figures, each unit will represent a greater value. Moreover, the uncertainty which has overhung and hampered business since the war will largely be removed, and if fortunes suffer diminution the position of their owners will, at any rate, be lees precarious. In point of fact, it is probable that certain wholesale prices have already been forced below cost of production. On the other hand, retail prices display considerable reluctance to move in sympathy with wholesale prices. This is unfortunate, for lower retail prices would provide a stimulus to renewed buying. While it is almost impossible to forecast the duration of the present depression, it may be useful to consider certain of its principal underlying causes. The first is psychological, for great masses of people throughout the world are holding off from buying in the hope of lower prices. The second cause for reduced buying may be found in the gradual exhaus-" tion by Continental nations of their foreign credits, for which the only remedy, as has so often been stated, is for nations to realise their poverty and to cut their coat according to their cloth. There m also the fact that industrial nations are abstaining from buying raw materials because of the uncertainty of the future course of prices. This deprives the countries growing raw materials of the means of purchasing manufactured articles, and it follows that the re-entering of the industrial nations into the raw material markets would, in all probability, have the effect of improving the demand for their own products. It has also to be remembered that while people are holding off from buying their needs are accumulating, with the result that when buying recommences there should, for a time, be quite a considerable amount of business passing, and probably j because of this, a certain reaction in price movements."

BRITAIN'S HEAVY TAXES. Discussing the British financial situation, the Spectator says:—" We cannot call to mind a time when the alarm of men who are at the heart of industrial and commercial questions was more deep and genuine than it i 3 now. National collapse is contemplated as a possibility not by featherpates, but by men who have all the threads of knowledge in their hands and who are by no means capable of being frightened by the gimcrack stories of scaremongers. Th« whole situation may be described in the single sentence: You cannot spend more than you have got. Applied to the making of a national budget, this means that you cannot spend more than you can raise from the community. When the leading minds of industry, commerce, and finance chiefly fear is the disappearance of credit, for they have for some months been watching its rapid decline, and they well know that the abolition of credit would be the of a highly perilous national condition. The disappearance of credit means all-round paralysis; paralysig means wholesale hunger, and discontent; and hunger and discontent in their turn are the foundation upon which revolutions are built. To sum up. | as long as the Government are manoeuvred into the position of being able to say defiantly and not without a good deal of verbal success, "Show u s what we can cut off," very little will be cut off. J* reme J d y »*o fcegin at the right end. We must decide how much we have got and then allot it to the departments. Although the proposal may seem fantastic to many because it is unconventional we believe that we ehall yet come to itM