NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18354, 21 March 1923, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A , PARLIAMENT OF INDUSTRY. Lord Milner, concluding his analysis of modern industrial problems in the London Observer says:—"Joint industrial councils, developed to the full, might do much to humanise the relations between the parties engaged in the work of production, and to make the organisation of industry subserve even wider social ends. If this system grows and national councils are established in all or most of the principal trades, they may pave the way to a further development of great importance. There are many questions affecting the welfare of any given trade, which can only be properly settled by the people who are themselves engaged in it. But there are other questions affecting the relations of one trade with another, or involving regulations which, if they are to be equitable, must apply to national industry as a whole, that cannot be dealt with by a number of separate and un-co-ordinated authorities. These problems may in the last resort require the intervention of the legislature. But it can only intervene successfully, after the matters, with regard 'to which it is called upon to act, have been thoroughly discussed by practical industrialists. Under present conditions such discussion could best be ensured by the creation of a national deliberative assembly, in which capital and labour enjoyed equal representation. . . If the success already achieved by these councils in certain trades leads to their general adoption, there will presently be an insistent demand, coming from them, for the establishment of a national body, a 'Parliament of Industry,' in which they would all be represented, to co-ordinate their separate efforts. That institution will not bring about the millennium, but it will be a great step forward."

SOCIAL SERVICES IN BRITAIN. The enormous cost of direct public assistance in Britain was discussed recently in tho Spectator by Mr. Geoffrey Drage, who briefly reviews the history of the present system from the seventeenth century. He shows how the Elizabethan Poor Law led to such tolerable extravagance that in 1834, the nation was reduced to the verge of bankruptcy, leaving the population in a state of complete demoralisation. In that year, the Commission of Inquiry and Control introduced such reforms that in 1871, the cost was almost exactly the same as in 1817, though the population had doubled. The new policy of State assistance came to the fore at the beginning of this century and " led the way from economic independence back to social servitude." Mr. Drage quotes the following estimates of the expenditure from rates and taxes on public assistance lß9o £25,000,000, including education £12,500,000; 1900 £39,000,000, 1910 £59,000,000, 1920 £332,000,000, including £99,000,000 for war pensions (which are in the nature of reward for services rendered), and £72.000,000 for education; 1921 £400,000,000. He declares that the enormous cost is largely due to overlapping by Government departments and local administrations. Mr. Drage states that an appeal is to be made to the Prime Minister to follow the precedent of 1834, and obtain a complete return of the actual expenditure and cost of administration and to set up a permanent commission of inquiry and control to decide whether some more economical and efficient form of administration can be devised Commenting on Mr. Drage's figures, the Spectator says they mean nearly a hundred pounds per family a year. Face to fare with these figures one is almost tempted to sav, "It would pay us to give a weekly dole of two. pounds per family to every non-income-tax-paving household in the country, and have done with it.

AMERICAN SHIPPING. One of the most striking features of the post-war period has been the failure of the American effort to establish a great merchant navy. That this was due to other causes than lack of native genius for the building and handling of ships is emphasised by Mr. Clement Jones in his history of British merchant shipping, in which he refers to American achievements in the days of sail. Americans led the world in the building of clipper ships. Their handling of sailing ships of war in the War of Independence is famous. So is the invention of the first turret ship, the Monitor, in the American Civil War— the ship from which all modern navies derive their form. Americans also have to their credit the early development of submarines. Mr. Jones says — The old bluff-bowed East Indiaman had had its day when the United States, now freed from war, introduced on the sea ships with clipper bows that cleft the waves instead of hitting them and retarding the passage of the hull through the water, The marine architects in America threw convention still further to the winds by modifying the design of the stern in such a way that, instead of squatting and holding the dead water, the ship slid through it cleanly with a minimum of resistance. The one object of the American designer was to build a ship that should sail every other craft off the seas, and so obtain the maximum of trade-carrying. Besides the improvement in bow and stern, the Americans lengthened the ship until she became five or six times longer than her breadth, against four times the beam in the case of the East India Company's ships. This gave an opportunity of adding a fourth mast to the ship and of carrying more sails. The sails themselves were improved in cut. In exact contradistinction to the East Indiamen. these American ships did not reef down in anticipation of the gale that was to follow hours afterwards, but took in sail reluctantly. The part played by the American clippers during the period between the close of the Napoleonic wars and the beginning of the American Civil War is one of vast importance in the development of the sailing ship. Even when steamers began to cross the Atlantic in 1840 these wonderful clippers were able to cross in about a fortnight."

TARIFFS AND COMMERCE. Commenting on the present condition of American shipping the Westminster Gazette says:—"lf we examine the real causes why ' the Americans, with their immense sea-board, have not been a seafaring people we shall find them not in the Civil War which transferred her fleets to other flags, but in the policy ■which followed upon that war. Immersed in the development of their internal resources th« Americans built their tariff walls higher and higher. What ships they had carried, for the most part, a cargo in one direction only. They could not be run in economic competition with vessels which went loaded both out and home. So American shipping failed to recover the blow it had received. It remains to be seen whether America, still with a high tariff, can be more sucessful in the new conditions of the world. What is more important is to discover how far acquaintance with trading by sea may modify the protective legislation of the United States, for a free-trade America would be the most formidable opponent Great Britain could have in every market of the world. She could afford to accept in goods the huge debts whifh are still owing to her. The influence of the new shipping policy upon immigration may be even more important. The United States have been able to absorb their unemployed, and the present limitations on immigration will not be maintained in face of that position. America will presently open its door wider to the foreigner who wishes to enter. That will be a necessary measure if the large passenger boats are to carry the passengers for whom they are designed. Making up its mind to be a force in shipping, the United States must take the means to that end, even though it involves » break with traditional policy,"