JAPANESE TEXTILES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22000, 5 January 1935, Page 10

JAPANESE TEXTILES

"AMAZING IMPROVEMENT"

COMPETITION WITH BRITAIN "Japan has made amazing strides in the •textile industry during the past three years," said Mr. E. P. Cockrill, one of the principals of a leading North of England firm, who arrived by the Wanganella yesterday on a holiday visit to the Dominion. During the past three years Mr. Cockrill has been travelling continuously either for business or on holiday and has visited most of the important countries in the world in that time, several of them more than once.

" Tho improvement in industry in .Japan has been truly incredible," said ; Mr. Cockrill. "A year or two ago 1 they wore putting material on the market that was not of a quality to command attention. To-day their materials are in serious competition with thoso from the British looms. This applies not only to cottons but to every other sort of fabric."

In spite of this competition, stated Mr. Gockrill, conditions in England were far better to-day than they have been for years. Everyone was much more confident than they were a year ago, and thero was an increasing feeling that a general.world-wide imj)rovoment was taking place all the time. One of tho chief factors contributing to tho recent depression, in his opinion, was tho tendency for people to buy cheap goods, thereby putting out of .employment tho people working in the factories producing higher quality goods. He l'elt that this tendency was rapidly coming to an end and people were gotting tired of buying cheap inferior articles. The sooner thero was a general move to revert to higher quality goods the sooner would there come brighter times. Mr. Coekrill did not think that, oven with a complete recovery, it would bo possible to absorb all tho unemployed in Britain back into industry. Every day new machines were being invented that could be looked after by fewer people and do many times the amount of work done by the old machines. Only by the creation of now industries was there any hope for wholesale reductions in unemployment.