COTTON TRADE CRISIS.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 July 1929, Page 8

COTTON TRADE CRISIS.

The news that the conference between employers and employees in the British cotton manufacturing industry has ended in a failure to find any compromise between their two points of view is very disconcerting. Unless wiser counsels prevail, the end of this week will see one of England’s most important industries at a standstill, and this at a time when it is feeling as never before the stress of competition not only from foreign manufacturers but from materials that are being favoured by the public for many purposes for •which only cotton goods were at one time used. The mill owners assert that competition necessitates a reduction of production costs, and have intimated that wages must be reduced as from Monday next. The employees have declared that they will not accept this, and if it is enforced that they will not man the factories. The British Government was instrumental in getting the two parties together in conference last week, but with disappointing results. It remains to be seen whether any further efforts will be made by the Labour Ministry to avert a strike that must prove disastrous to British industry generally, and to the cotton trade most of all. Half a million workers are directly involved in the issue. With their dependents it means that upwards of two million people will be lacking means of sustenance, or at least will find their spending capacity alarmingly reduced. This in turn will have its effect upon New Zealand products for which the area affected by the strike is a good market, and one that promises to become a better one. With such vast interests at stake, and with the object lesson of the coal strike in 1926, and all that arose from it as a warning, it seems incredible that some way cannot be found by which the threatened industrial upheaval may be avoided.