JAPANESE INDUSTRY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18632, 16 February 1935, Page 14

JAPANESE INDUSTRY

MODERN METHODS LITTLE UNEMPLOYMENT 'PLIGHT OF NORTHERN FARMERS

Modern manufacturing methods employed in the principal industrial centres in Japan and the comparative absence of unemployment were commented on 'by Mr. S. :R. Norris, manager of the fancy goods department of L. D. Nathan and Company, Limiteu, who returned this week after his third visit to the East. Mr. Norris was away from New Zealand for a little over six months, and spent about three months in Japan. ‘‘Jhe Japanese are industrious and clever, and they have up-to-date machinery, equal to that in use in -any- other part of the world,” Mr. Norris said. “Employees arc happy and there are no labour troubles. There is practically no unemployment, although some difficulty is being experienced in placing boys and girls who are leaving school.” The average wage paid in Japan might appear low, Mr. Norris said, but rent and rood, two of the principal items, were extremoly cheap, and the average Japanese working man or woman was perhaps better off than his or her counterpart in England. Inquiries made by the Government showed that the average wage of women workers was 20 yen a mouth, about £1 ,10s in New Zealand money, and that of men 50 yen, or £3 15s. A factory foreman in charge of anything up to 200 people might receive 100 yen, or £7 10s, a month. With the rapid growth of population, over a million babies being born annually, Japan could no longer grow sufficient foodstuffs to feed the nation and-had been forced into manufacturing to be iri a position to buy food from overseas. In the last three years the quality of Japanese manufactures had increased tremendously, and the country was . now producing what might be termed saleable merchandise, products of good medium quality. There was, of course, still a great deal of cheap goods made, as-there was a market for this class of article, but the Japanese was versatile and would make practically anything demanded of him.