PROFITS AND WAGES.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXIX, Issue 3999, 27 November 1918, Page 3

PROFITS AND WAGES.

IRONMASTER'S EXPERIENCE.

Sir Hugh Bell, the well-known Cleveland ironmaster, in an address at the Welfare Conference at Oxford recently, said the total output of the country must suffice for all our wants, provide for the increase of population, and, if we were to make progress, leave a surplus.

Referring to the iron and steel industry, he pointed out that, beginning as he did with the raw material, he was able to make a complete analysis of the whole division of profits, with the result that wages formed 70 per cent. o£ the whole, salaries 5 per cent, and the remaining 25 per cent. (served to pay all other outgoings and to provide his profit, which at the most did not exceed 10 per cent. Of this not more than half was available for his own use. From the remaining half of the employer's share a,ny improvement in the works and plant had to he provided.

It was essential to obtain improvement in the •standard, of living of the workpeople, but this could be best accomplished, not by the reapportionment of the product of industry, but by the enhancement of its amount. The earnest co-operation of both employers and employed was needed to solve the, industrial problem in the period of reconstruction upon which they were entering.

Mr J. Mallon (member of the Whitley Committee) said a new orientation of industry was required, in which the employer would find his proper Avork in the role of industrial engineer. It was essential that the workmen should be able, as at present admittedly they w^re not, to take part in the control of industry, and from this point of view the Whitley Councils offered the men in the great trade unions an invaluable school of training and experience.