WHY THIS GLOOM?

Southland Times, Issue 21264, 10 December 1930, Page 22

WHY THIS GLOOM?

THE NEED OF TO-DAY. MOTORIST’S PROVOCATIVE ARTICLE. As one of the most successful figures in the manufacturing world. Sir William Morris writes with unsurpassed authority on the problems confronting Great Britain to-day in this article he gave to the Daily Mail. When a business man makes a decision, as I have done recently. that directly affects the livelihood of at least 50,000 work-people, he must of necessity ask himself whether he should adopt a policy of progressive speculation or tentative caution. Britain to-day is depressed. There is no gainsaying the fact. We have over two .million unemployed, and an unemployed workman does not merely represent the loss of one num-unit; he is a definite drag on the efforts of those who are employed—a dead weight that the community has to carrv. Times, as the saying is, are bad. Only Service Counts. j n coh’inon with oik’r business men, I have had <lecille "'heAer under these conditions I sb? uld >» ctleet * ,ay for Bafety and frame up a forward programme on lines that would be skimped but certain, or whether I should talw bolder steps. My faith in Britain has decided me, >■ not to speculate, at legst to do very near it and to endeavour largely to ] increase the number of people I employ by putting on the market a range of products that, because of their price-value, will, given a reasonable chance, not merely deserve, but command success. I believe that if this policy could be instilled into the whole of our present commercial structure we should see one of the biggest trade revivals that not merely Britain but the whole world has ever seen._ Pessimism and optimism viewed nationally are both reactive. Basically, everyone in this world lives by doing something for | someone else. Money is only 7 a medium of exchange for work done for the benefit of some other members of the community. I believe that the present depression is purely artificial in its brqader sense, and it is high time that steps were taken to shake not only Britain but the world gener- j ally out of this atmosphere of sten.e inaction, and for every- one of us who is en- I gagctl in business to realize that if ’we I stand back and curtail our activities with | plain ca’canny methods we are only throwing a boomerang that is sure to return and harm u< —perhaps fatally. Equally, every progressive action that we make and progressive policy that we adont, providing, naturally, that ii is commercially sound, must have a reflex benefit. For instance, I make motor-cars which, because they provide reliable, enjoyable, and economical transport, are brought, by' members of the community. Moneypasses through my hands to my workpeople. and they are enabled thereby to purchase the products, among other things, of the people who have bought my cars. The more of these products they buy the better is the community to a degree able to purchase the products of their labour, and so on. Think Constructively. The evolution of the world is cyclic. Events either react damagingly in a vicious circle, or else constructively and progressively. 'there has never been a time like the present when we should all of us think constructively’ and endeavour by our actions to make progress. Criticism is always easy—destructive criticism particularly so. Were I asked what is the biggest fault with England at the present time I should be inclined to say our system of government. I am not vain., but is it not a little illogical that men who control directly and indirectly the activities of many thousands of work-people only get the same single vote in the conduct of national affairs as does the professional dolesnatcher? _ • , , . ,;i jii ; j.; I’believe-that our present systeiii of te-' presentation has developed a method or party politics that has as its background the adoption of measures calculated to appeal not to the thinking classes but to the masses, who are literally shouting for a leader. No business could be run on the lines on which we try to run England. Whoever heard in the board room of a successful commercial house the counterpart of such childish bickerings and pettifogging personal pin-prickings as. those to which we have been treated of late in our supposedly' austere and deep-thinking House of Parliament? Manners in debate on matters of extreme seriousness seem to have gone by the board; and whether it was done for publicity or for some uncontrollable psychological reason surely the notion of the honourable member who misappropriated the Mace cannot by any stretch of imagination be said to have benefited England'! Floundering. Statesmanship as we used to know it appears to be conspicuous by its absence, and any serious-minded man is compelled to the opinion that politics in the House of Commons is nowadays a pastime of personal publicists rather than the serious undertaking that it should be. I wonder how often it occurs to the average mu:, or woman that the members of our Government are I lie directors of the largest business in the world with the Prime Minister their managing director? This being so, one would naturally expect that those directors should represent the finest brains lhe country can produce; but although there are perhifps several exceptions, I think it can be said that for many years past the reverse has been the order of tilings. Were any large business run under such conditions it would not I be more than six months before it was in I a state of chaos. This is the position we find ourselves in to-day, floundering in a sea of uncertainty with no one at the wheel possessing that quality of business acumen which is so vitally necessary to our existence as a nation; the result being colossal unemploy- j ment, and, what is more galling still, unemployment of the best workmen in the world who, with a first-class leader, would onee more bring us into our proper place in the sun. "Leaders!” One of the chief evidences of this country’s greatness is its ability to withstand such protracted mismanagement without collapsing utterly. We must truly be a wonderful nation; and I say that any country whose people can remain even moderately cheerful in the face of such government and crass ignorance of some of the “leaders” who are supposed to control it, is a. country that is very far from being dead. I think I have sufficient common sense to see that there must logically very soon be a change in this futile state of affairs; and because we have a middle-class populace in this country that is capable of working efficiently, buying carefully and playing heartily, I feel that we have a national asset that will ultimately bring us through. Anyway, I am backing my decision by making some very substantial price cuts to enlarge the field of attraction of my products and am .also introducing new models that have been developed to compete with foreign-made machines and also to fill a long-felt want on the part of many •people for a medium-sized six-cylinder car at a price lower than that which was charged for many four-cylinder models a year ago.

In the.se days it is no good asking for support —one has to deserve it, and I believe that if we as a nation shook off this gloom and really put our backs into work and constructive effort and generally got on with the job there is nothing that could possibly stop us from getting back to those cheerful times of peaceful prosperity and a fully employed community. .