INDUSTRIAL WORLD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21266, 21 February 1931, Page 21

INDUSTRIAL WORLD.

NEWS AND NOTES. By J. T. Paul. THE INVERCARGILL SEAT. The Invercargill branch of the Labour Party decided at a largely-attended meeting to nominate the Rev. J. K. Archer and Mr W. C. Denham to be submitted to the Labour Representation Committee for selection to contest the Invercargill seat at the forthcoming general election. The Rev. J. K. Archer, now Mayor of Christchurch, was at one time minister of the Esk Street Baptist Church, Invercargill, and he once contested the Invercargill seat in the Labour interest. Mr Denham has for many years been prominently associated with the Labour movement in Invercargill, and he has frequently given able expositions of the principles to which he has pledged his allegiance.

SOVIET PRISON LABOUR. Efforts have recently been made by several members of the House of Commons to induce the Government to take action under the Foreign Prison Made Goods -Act, 1897, in respect of timber produced in Soviet prison camps. The question was raised as long ago as July, 1929, but the Government has Repeatedly refused to make an inquiry. In a letter addressd to Mr MacDonald recently, Commander Belairs wrote: —“The clear intention of Parliament in the 1897 Act was to keep out goods produced by prison labour.' As you are aware, when a mobilisation of the entire population in any province takes place for work in the forests, any disobedience of the men, women, and children over 16 turns the individual into a convict, so there is little to choose when prison labour is supplemented by compulsory labour. It is quite true that in over 20 stations where sawmills and lumber industries are established it will be possible in a few cases to point to what is called free labour, that is, labour which cannot be left without depriving the worker of his ration card for food and clothing, so that to leave the work means starvation. Making allowance for this doubtful quantity, it remains true, especially of the northern camps, that the great bulk of the timber exports coming to this country are defeating the intentions of Parliament, and the whole of it ought to be cut off until the vile system is ended.”

LABOUR IN AUSTRALIA. All the signs and portents indicate a serious difference of opinion among the political leaders in Australia. Whether it will grow or be bridged depends on the exercise ,of qualities which at the moment appear to be wholly absent. The Queensland Worker, for instance, in its latest issue draws a lesson from the Parkes by-election:— To earnest Labourites it is more than probable the by-election, if it has any significance at all, is in reality a vote of censure on Labour inaction in this very particular, on what a number of Parkes electors probably regard as the impotence of a Labour Government that apparently stands idly by while unemployment record dimensions, and wages, as the judgment of the Federal Arbitration Court had just before shown, are being forced to the lowest level. Taking this view, and with such obstacles to Labour’s financial proposals as Fenton and Lyons out of the Ministry, and Theodore back at his old post of Federal Treasurer, Labour should at once get busy. Too much precious time has already been lost; too much of the spirit of drift and fearfulness shown when courage, action, and audacity are the qualities needed among leaders claiming to be statesmen.

Already, however, the driving force af Theodore is being felt, and the signs are that Federal Labour will yet ring true to its platform and its ideals, and that it will , rise, and . quickly at that as the occasion demands, to the big responsibilities that the present crisis has thrust upon its broad shoulders. THE OUTLOOK. In the midst of our own difficulties it is perhaps helpful to have a comprehensive view of the economic position as it appears to the International Labour Office. Reviewing the past year its official organ declares it to have been one of actute anxiety for Governments and peoples. Economic difficulties have been a constant cause of preoccupation among all those who are concerned in finance, industry and trade. For employers and workers, particularly, those difficulties have given rise to many harassing problems —problems of costs, markets, prices, wages, hours, and employment. From the standpoint of social wellbeing, the situation at the close of the year is disquieting, especially in view of the vast and still growing volume of unemploy, ment. For the moment, it is impossible to more than express the hope that the shrinkage of employment has reached its limit, and that until it_ begins to expand again the worst hardships to which want of employment might otherwise expose millions of workers, and their dependants will be mitigated by the generous application of insurance and relief systems. “In the other side of the scales may be put the fact that, in spite of the need for retrenchment imposed by present economic circumstances, the level of conditions of employment has on the whole been maintained. It is true that in one or two directions recently there have been reductions in rates of wages, avowedly dictated by economic necessity; but there has so far been no serious encroachment on established standards as regards hours of work and general conditions of labour, and employers have generally shown a disposition to avoid it. “In part, perhaps, it may be claimed that the safeguarding of 1 those standards is attributable to the existence of the International Labour Organisation which, in addition to creating a network of formal undertakings on the part of States to enforce the observance of specified minimum conditions, also provides a strong moral deterrent to any measures which might be regarded as retrograde. It is, in fact, not a little encouraging to note that, in a year of depression and struggle, international labour legislation has continued to make progress, and that, in addition to adopting two new conven-

tions for the benefit of commercial workers and native races, the States members of the International Labour Organisation have increased by over 30 (from 383 to 415) the number of their ratifications of the earlier conventions." SOME QUESTIONS. Dr H. Emerson Fosdick, the most popular preacher in New York, and pastor of the famous Riverside Church, has probably more millionaires in his congregation than any other preacher in tne world. He gave a very straight talk on unemployment on a recent Sunday. Dr Fosdick said: “ Unemployment as we meet it to-day is a modern disease of the new machine system. Now, you men of science and of business created this machine system and it took brains, magnificent brains. You have them. And you are under the solemnest kind of obligation to use them now, not simply to make money out of the system, but to solve the social problems that underlie it and emerge from it. “To be sure, I am no economist. I make no claim to expertness in realms that are not mine. But there are some facts that lift themselves like raised letters out of this situation that even a numbskull must see some meaning in. “ I ask you men of business two brief questions this morning. First, why cannot we have unemployment insurance? We insure against almost everything else, fire, death, disease, invalidism, industrial accident. Why cannot we insure against unemployment? “In 1911 in America we passed the first laws concerning insurance against industrial accidents, and since then there have been 50 legislative Acts covering pretty nearly the whole country, so that it is estimated that annually about 200,000,000 dollars is paid out by American industry to its workmen and their dependents. We had brains enough to face that social menace and to lift that burden of fear from the backs of multitudes. They used to say we could not afford to do it. We know now that we could not afford not to do it. “ Can we afford not to extend insurance to this appalling menace of unemployment? Mark it! We are going to foot the bill one way or the other. We are going to pour out millions in charity this winter. Why cannot we use our brains, so that we may spend our money in businesslike fashion to insure against “I ask you men of business one second question: Why cannot we stop repeating that insane formula about competition being the life of trade in a new age when obviously competition is the death

of trade, and begin '.drawing the basic industries of our nation together in cooperative planning under wise social control ? “ To take one of Stuart Chase’s illustrations, we have in this country fullyequipped factories able to turn out annually almost 900,000,000 pairs of shoes when we never buy more than 300,000,000. Of course, unemployment, inevitably unemployment! That is typical, too typical, of our coal mines, gasoline refineries, automobiles, and what other industries let economists say. “We are not using our brains upon our basic industries as we do upon the telephone, for example, fitting production to consumption, accommodating what we make to what we can buy back and so preventing this wild over-pi’oduction, underconsumption, spasmodic depression, and inevitable unemployment. Why cannot we use our brains for co-operative planning and social control? “If somebody wishes to call that socialism, let him call it socialism!_ Pretty nearly every decent and co-operative thing we ever have done has been called by somebody socialism. They call municipal waterworks socialism. They called public schools socialism. They called municipal electric light plants socialism. They called municipal markets socialism. “ There never has been a case yet when we found that we could no longer do things well apart and tried then to do them together that somebody did not call it socialism. Do not be fooled by a word. We face a fact. We cannot go on building factories able to turn out 900,000,000 pairs of something when we need only 300,000,000 pairs. That is the fact. Why Cannot we use our brains for co-operative planning? “ I plead, therefore, to-day for the dedication of your intelligence. Relief is not enough. This disease calls for preventive medicine. The ministers cannot supply it. We arc not experts there. You men of business must, and the trouble is that business in general has been so prosperous that the magnificent brains of the business world have expended themselves in making money out of the system instead of facing the social problems involved in the system. All of us together have too much sat by the fire warming ourselves.”