NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19604, 5 April 1927, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Australian labour. The conviction that Australian labour is making the way for Australia's infant industries unnecessarily and unreasonably difficult was expressed by Mr. F. R. E. Mauldon, senior lecturer in economics at Melbourne University, in a survey of the industries of the Newcastle region. Speaking of the great addition to the costs of production caused by " labour turnover," sometimes so great that 3000 men a year are employed to keep a plant requiring 1000 hands in operation, Mr. Mauldon says: "In large part the problem has its roots in the roving qualities of the Australian, and, in part, more especially in the case of men with skill, in independence of pressing economic need, and, perhaps—to cite the printers—to consciousness of monopoly in skill. With the basic wage at £4 4s, but the actual average earning nearer £5 10s, it is not surprising that young unmarried! fellows in, say, wire-making works, will allow themselves the luxury of a month's holidaying when it suits them, undeterred by fears of inability to regain the job, and certainly untroubled by thoughts of managerial difficulties involved in their action." Labour has made substantial gains in spite of the tendency of these gains to discount one another, " and these same gains, viewed from the standpoint of many fair-minded employers, have largely produced among employees an independence manifested in truculence and irresponsibility rather than in dignified co-operation with management in the common problems of production and distribution." Mr. Mauldon remarks upon the need foy a spirit of mutual responsibility on the part of mineowners and wage-earners, but the continuance of mutual responsi- • bility is incompatible with the acceptance of the class-war doctrine.

BRITAIN'S NATIONAL INCOME. A comparative study of the income of the United Kingdom in 1911 and 1924 has been published by Professor Bowley and Bir Josiab Stamp. Their conclusions have been summarised in the Observer by Mi - . William Graham, M.P. In spite of increased unemployment and the reduced working week, real home-produced income was very nearly the same per head in 1924 as in 1911; the distribution of income between wage-earners, other earners, and <Uunearned income was changed slightly in favour of the earning classes; manual workers on the average make slightly increased real earnings, to which must be added transfers for their benefit in insurance schemes aid other public expenditure. Profits as a whole, reckoned before tax is paid, form nearly the same proportion to total income at the two dates. Industrial advance is represented by the fact that within the wage-earning classes women and unskilled workers haves received a substantial real advance in wages; the great majority of skilled workers made at least as much after allowing for the rise of prices) in 1924 as in 1911. The comparison also suggests that when the full effects of taxation are considered the rich have less real income available for saving or expenditure than before the war. Allowing for rise of prices, luxuri-* ous expenditure is definitely less than in 1911, but its concentration in small areas, and consequent advertisement, give it a place in public discussion to which its economic merits do not entitle it. Taking a popular line through the thirteen years, taxation has laid a heavy band upon the wealthy in particular j certain sections of the masses, especially women and unskilled workers, have improved their purchasing power; but the rest are economically very much where they were in 1911. Moreover, it is clear that mere redistribution of the burdens of taxation as a method of social or industrial improvement is at best of limited value; hope ties in far greater efficiency within industry itself.