INDUSTRIAL WORLD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18601, 8 July 1922, Page 14

INDUSTRIAL WORLD.

NEWS AND NOTES. Br J. T. Pacl. WHAT IS NECESSARY. “’lt is not merely that trade and employment are bad,” said Earl Haig recently. “Faith is at a low ebb, and hope too often yields to disillusionment. The slump that has followed the war is not simply a physical matter. It is a question of moral courage as well, and the falling away of the sense of comradeship and common interest that, ever burned with so'clear and strong a flame during the storm and turmoil of war. “If wo are not to lose the fruit of all our victories and not to fail in the example which these men set, then we in whoso hands the future of our country rests, must get back something of our former sense of duty, and must revive the old feeling of comradeship with our fellows. We must got back to the days of common effort an 1 mutual goodwill ” FACTORY LEGISLATION, IN INDIA. Tire Indian Legislature has passed a law reducing the maximum hours of work for factories in India from 72 to 60 per week, with a maximum of 12 hours in any one day. The new law applies to all factories using mechanical power and employing 20 persons or more, and may bo extended to factories employing only 10 persons, and to those which do not use mechanical power , The maximum daily hours of work for children are fixed at six per day, and the minimum age for juvenile employment is raised from nine to 12, subject to exception m the case of childern legally employed before the Act goes into force. According to official returns made in 1919, out of an average daily number of 268,000 persons employed in cotton mills in British India, 198,000 are men, 47,000 women, and ,23,000 children. ARBITRATION IN AUSTRALIA. “Whatever faith we had in the Arbitration Court prior to the engineers’ and other awards, ha; entirely gone by the board," was the comment made by R. O’Halldran, president of the Victorian Iron Trades Council, in Melbourne recently, in reviewing recent decisions of the court. “There seems,” he said, “to be a growing feeling that, the court will in the future be very unpopular. . . . The inability of the court to make a common rule and the great expense incurred in obtaining an award, together with the difficulty of retaining it when it is obtained and the vexatious delays in getting before the court, have killed its usefulness. The unsatisfactory and inadequate information on which the cost of living figures are calculated has also helped to destroy in a great measure the hopes that the workers once entertained in regard to the efficacy of industrial courts to improve the relations between Capital and Labour. The whole system requires to he put in the melting pot and recast, and the sooner that is done .the better.” LABOUR BANKS. The first co-operative bank in California ha? been formed by the railroad employees and other organised workers of San Bernardino, who have just taken over the stock of the San Bernardino Valley Bank, and converted it into a co-operative institution to be known as the Brotherhood Trust and Savings Bank. The workers of San Bernardino, who already have a- thriving cooperative store, laundry, and newspaper, have been planning for the past year to mobilise their funds in their own cc?-operativ 8 bank. They secured an option on the stock of a wellknown State bank organised in 1889, having -the oldest savings bank charter in the country. Following the purchase of the stock of the existing State Bank by the organised workers, a new board of directors was elected to take over the bank, limit the earnings of the shareholders, and provide for the co-operative distribution of profits with depositors. The Brotherhood Trust and Saving Bank starts with a paid-in capital of £17,000, assets of over £154,000, and deposits of £120,000. The workers of San Bernardino predict that the new cooperative bank will have; deposits exceeding a million dollars within a year. As an aftermath to the organisation of the Brotherhood Trust and Savings Company, the California State Building Trades Council tdopted a resolution directing its executive board to investigate the feasibility of establishing a chain of Labour banks throughout the State. AN ESSAY ON MARX. Professor Harold J. Laski has added one more contribution to the literature relating to Karl Marx. It is already so voluminous that it might be considered somewhat difficult to offer new light on his character and work. However Professor Laski has, within the comnass of 46 pages, given us a pen picture as illuminating as it is interesting. The work has be®n published on behalf of the Fabian Society by the fund which was instituted as a memorial of Lieutenant William Tulloeh and Captain Hugh Barr, M. 8., R.A.M ,C„ two members of the Fabian Society who lost their lives in the Great War. “No name in the history of social ideas,” says the Professor, “occupies a place more remarkable than that of Karl Marx. Save Machiavolli and Rousseau, no thinker has been , the subject of a condemnation so unsparing, and, like Rousseau, it has been his fortune to preside after death over a revolution conceived in his name.” 1 On every page of the essay there is evidence cf thoughtful fairness, _ and its perusal would unquestionably assist even Marxians to understand their patron saint. Professor Laski says that at bottom the main passion by whiyh Marx was moved was the passion of juftico. “He may have hated too strongly, he was jealous, and ho was proud. But the mainspring of his life was the desire to take from the_ shoulders of the people the burden by which it was oppressed. . . . He was often wrong, ho was rarely generous, he was always bitter; yet when the roll of those to whom tho emancipation of the people is due comes to be called, few will have a more honourable, and none a more eminent, place.” The essay is published at Is, is dedicated lo Mr H. G. Wells, and Allen and Unwin, Ltd., are joint publishers with the Fabian Society. JOTTINGS. The Now South Wales Full Arbitration Court- has decided that the Board of Trade declaration on May 12 last is valid. This announcement now opens the way to an all-round reduction of 4g per week in tho wages of male adult workers. The 50,000 workers pow employed at tho great Krupp engineering works at, Essen. Germany, work on an eight-hour schedule which begins at 6 o’clock in the morning. They have but one 15-minute pause in their work, and they slop at 2.15. This gives them practically all the afternoon, ns well us the evening, for amusement. An average of 2573 miners are killed in American coal mines each year. Normally ihcre are 775,000 employed in coal mines, including botli union and open-shop mines. The death ra(e is about one in each 300 miners a year. The death rate has been reduced a third since 1907, by safety ap plianccs, inventions, and protective laws. Four miners now arc killed for each 1,000,000 tons of coal produced. The Federal Government is appointing a special tribunal to consider the question of increasing the hours of work in the timber industry from 44 to 48 per week. This decision has been arrived at following a, request by the limber merchants and hardwood millers that a full Arbitration Court be constituted to deal with tho matter. Tho tribunal will also deal with tho question of hours in other industries. Two Australian bush men—Messrs Jackson and Maclaren—are stated to have established the fastest record in tho world at tree chopping while felling oaks and poplars on tho estate of tho Marquis of Salisbury, at Hatfield, England (says tho Forest News letter). Some of the trees wore over 100 ft high and 10ft in girth. They were cut down in less than three minutes each, and logs sawn in 15 seconds. Although tho annual report of the Comp-troller-general of Patents is not yet out, inquiries at the Patent Office, London, concerning the number of applications by women revealed the fact that they have been 297 for tho year 1921. This number is 14 fewer than in 1920 and nine fewer titan in 1919. Examination into the subjects of their patents reveals the ’ that their inventive powers turn over, more on improved plumbing and valvclces engines than on a new kind of saucepan. Tho Women’s Engineering Society hns done much lo stimulate tho invention of labour-saving l devices.

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