INDUSTRIAL REORGANISATION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16475, 20 October 1927, Page 3

INDUSTRIAL REORGANISATION

COTTON JOINS IN LONDON, Sept. 7. After steel and coal, cotton. As badly bit as any of our staple, industries, the Lancashire cotton trade is at last stirring itself to find out the causes of its continued depression and to apply the remedies. It is time it did so. In the American section of the trade thousands of looms and 2,000.000 spindles arc idle, and 20,000,000 spindles are working but three days a week. Some 40,000 mill workers are unemployed, and most of the rest are on half wages. Nearly a third of Lancashire’s pre-war export trade in American cotton goods has gone, the; banks are refusing further advances, and the mills in many eases are deteriorating for lack of funds to keep them in good repair. Nov are these conditions of sudden growth. They have persisted for several years, and the result is a crisis which can only be surmounted by the concerted action of the industry as a whole. These many-sided problems are now beiny tackled as they should be tackled. A Yarn Association has been formed, and in five months has gathered in 75 per cent, of the spinners in the American section. The’ great meeting which was held on Tuesday in the Manchester Town Hall resolved iI self very largely info an earnest- appeal to the 25 per cent. Who still hold aloof to join the new organisation. Unless it is all-inclusive such a body lacks the power it must have to be of full use; it is always open to a minority to defeat its purposes. If all the spinners in the American section were to come in there would then be formed a completely representative asso ciation able ’to regulate production, hours and prices in the interests of the entire industry. The Lancashire cotton trade, extraordinarily efficient in its units, has not hitherto been well organised as a whole. It is now feeling its way towards a plan of co-operative control which, if loyally supported, will enable it to win hack its old primacy.