FOREIGN TRUSTS’ TACTICS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 750, 24 August 1929, Page 7

FOREIGN TRUSTS’ TACTICS

SWEATED LABOUR PRODUCTS No country can ever expect to prosper or progress which allows itself to remain the dumping ground for the surplus products of other countries, and while at times it may mean cheap goods for a brief period they prove dear buying in the long run. The countries which are the most prosperous today are those which are busiest producing for themselves, and which have sheltered their home producers against the dumping of surplus goods by outsiders. THE dumping evil arises from many varying conditions, but is always a bad thing for the country which suffers it to be imposed. One of the worst phases is that of a country with a low-standard of living, where goods may be produced without restrictions as to wages, hours, or conditions of labour. After supplying its home market the manufacturers explore the commercial world in search of dumping grounds where their surplus of sweated-labour products may be unloaded in competition with local workers enjoying a high standard of living, and employers bound by rigid restrictions of the hours and conditions of labour. Woe betide the country which leaves itself unguarded to the dumping of these products on its shores, as the inevitable result must be the lowering of the standard of living in that country to the level of the countries from which it. gets its “cheap” goods. Six months ago our workers in the clothing trade waited on the Minister of Customs to poiut out that 75 per cent, of the machinery in our clothing factories was idle owing to the dumping of imported goods made by sweated labour, or under a wages scale and labour conditions with which New Zealand workers could not possibly compete. At the same time the “Daily Mirror,” a London paper with no particular leanings toward Labour, reported a case in the tailoring trade where the registrar of the Clerkenwell County Court described the conditions as “glaring sweating of the worst type,” and the secretary of the Garment Workers* Union told the same paper of ghastly conditions where tailoresses were sweating and slaving in garrets, kitchens and cellars, so that cheap clothing of shoddy materials could be exported to unprotected countries overseas, and the Trade Boards Act to prevent sweating in Britain was only S per cent, effective. At the annual meeting of one of the Dominion’s largest woollen milling concerns, the chairman told of men’s trousers costing 3s without duty being landed here, and sold at three times the cost after paying a paltry 25 per cent, duty. We ship 75 per cent, of our good new wool clip abroad, and then reimport it mixed up with cotton and shoddy put together by sweated labour. If but one third of the “mixed’* woollen stuffs now imported into New Zealand were made here our woollen mills would c>e working overtime and instead of employees seeking work more hands would be needed. The same restriction on the dumping of dubious clothing would set our factory machinery humming busily instead of lying half-idle. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald declared just before the recent elections in Britain that to deal with the dumping of undesirable goods “the way to meet the problem was not by safeguarding or by tariffs, but to keep them out altogether.” Other countries are constantly raising their tariff walls against our goods while always seeking to dump their surplus supplies on us. America’s new tariff practically excludes our foodstuffs and raw materials, but American trusts are übiquitous in searching for outside markets after satisfying the monopoly enjoyed of their own. Mass production with labour-saving machinery must be kept going at top speed with three shifts a day. The plant is so costly that if it stops running overhead charges soar. So our farmer can buy American machinery cheaper at times than the American farmer on the spot. The ways of a trust in its dumping are peculiar. Our farmer pays £72 for a ! reaper and binder which comes in ] duty free. The Australian farmer | pays £7O for the same machine after jit has paid 45 per cent, duty! Why? i When the duty here was raised on certain farming implements from 20 to 35 per cent, the New Zealand makers reduced prices by 15 per cent., and the foreign trust kept the same prices on its dumped machinery and paid the extra duty. If the farmer wants cheap machinery and implements he should support high tariffs. The only way to escape being victims of dumping is to safeguard our own industries and demaud tbe goods made by our own workers, for dumped goods are dearest in the long run. P.A.