BRITAIN’S TRADE RECOVERY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22504, 23 February 1935, Page 12

BRITAIN’S TRADE RECOVERY

The most effective contribution towards recovery, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said a few days ago in a confident utterance concerning the industrial position in Great Britain and the unemployment problem, could be made through the stimulation of trade. Britain is affording the world an example of the successful application of energy to this end. The figures cited by the President of the Board of Trade, in a speech at the Industries Fair banquet, are distinctly indicative, as he claimed, of renewed confidence and greater industrial activity. An improvement in the country’s export trade to the value of over thirty millions as compared with the previous year constitutes substantial evidence of recovery and progress. The increased imports of raw materials have been a natural accompaniment of exports the advance in which has been largely represented by manufactured goods. The resourcefulness of the British

manufacturers is being demonstrated, and last year they exported goods exceeding three hundred millions in value. It was recently declared by Mr Chamberlain that no reason existed why the coming months should not see a very considerable reduction in the number of her unemployed. If there is any belief more common to-day than the idea that machines are creating general unemployment, observes the Economist, it is the belief that transfers of labour between industries have become so slow and difficult that it is always worth while bolstering up a declining industry rather than directing unwanted labour into an expanding one. Yet both these beliefs, it sets out to, show, can be refuted by unimpeachable statistics. Figures supplied by the Ministry of Labour indicate both that the total number of persons employed in Great Britain is steadily growing despite .technological progress, and that labour is migrating rapidly from the contracting to the expanding industries. Evidence of that kind should represent in no small degree an antidote to pessimism concerning the industrial outlook. Mr Runciman particularly mentioned iron and .steel goods, railway materials, machinery of all classes, and motor cars —with a new record —as contributing to the improvement in the country’s exports. By far the most important of Britain’s expanding industries, according to the figures of the Ministry of Labour,'have been the distributive trades and building, the former having absorbed about 600,000 persons into employment in the past ten years, enough to compensate for the whole decrease in employment in coal mining. In the last seven years, it is computed, there has been a transfer of about a million persons from the contracting to the expanding industries. This movement, taking place in years of depres- ’ sion when- the forces making for transfer are supposed to be at their weakest, should sufficiently demonstrate, the Economist holds, “ the absurdity of the idea that we can only employ our people by artificially bolstering up existing industries and trades.” Among the contracting industries which might be made the subject of a different picture to that presented by Mr Runciman, the principal is coal mining, which is the only contracting industry that continues unmistakably to contract. The shrinkage of employment in this industry is mainly due to a decline in the demand for coal, and it is to be apprehended that the policy which Italy is adopting, in the spirit of nationalism which is so unfortunately prevalent in the world to-day and is a definite hindrance to world trade recovery, will further affect the export of British coal to the Continent. Between the years 1923 and 1931 —both years of moderate recovery from' depression —the expanding industries in Great Britain drew, the statistics indicate, about a million fresh persons into employment. But as, in so doing, they did not go more than about half-way towards absorbing the increase in population, there was an increase in unemployment keeping pace with the increase of employment. Yet the figures furnished by the Ministry of Labour prove, the Economist considers, that there is no fundamental reason, due to technical progress or anything else, tvhy the remaining surplus should not be absorbed if the right commercial and monetary policies are followed.