WISE MEN FROM THE EAST.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLV, Issue 11847, 31 May 1919, Page 6

WISE MEN FROM THE EAST.

CAPTUBING THE WOBLD’S MABKET.

Daring a week’s tour of the industrial town of the Midlands I have been struck with the constant iteration of one phrase—Japanese competition (says James Dunn in the “Daily Mail”) The ironworkers of the Black Country, the leather merchants of Walsall, the hardware manufacturers of Birmingham, as well as as the small dealers in sundry products, all regard with deep anxiety Japanese encroachments on the market of.the world. The wise men from the East have been learning in the best European schools for more than twenty years, and they are now garnering the havrest of their foresight and enterprise. Years ago the beat commercial schools of Manchester were packed with Japausee studying the intricacies of cotton spinning. In Germany and Austria right up to the war Japanese wore learning how to make those wonderful toys which have been the joy of children and the problem of our manufacturers. Where to*-clay can they make the porcelain face of a doll such as they turned out in Vienna for half a crown? And were in the wide world do they make those ingenious mechanical toys of tin that came from Nuremberg?. The anwser to these questions is —Japan. From iron plates to toy motor-cars from cotton goods to fancy leather articles Japan is capturing the markets of the world. Labour is cheap in the “England of the East. ’ ’ No strikes or rumours of strike interrupt the even tenor of the business way. The Japanese ironworker is content with ninepence a day, hence the ridiculously cheap prices charged for Japanese iron in Canada, where once the Black Country held undisputed sway. During the last six months not more than a score of tons of Black Country iron have been exported to Canada. From South Africa comes a similar story. Japanese prices are so low that only by transplanting in dustries from this country can our manufacturer hope to complete with the abnormal exports from the East. At one time the average British housewife stocked her home with cfieap articles from Germany; today . almost every domestic article is made in Japan, even to boot laces. Those silent, studious, observant young Japanese who thronged our commercial colleges a quarter of a century ago are the builders of the new Japan, They were the pioneers of Japanese prosperity, the commercial supplanters of the old-time Samurai. Cheerfully we taught them, eagerly they learned, and now when our trade is weighed down by taxation and baulked by strikes the quiet little man from Nippon is playing the master where once he was scholar.