ART OF WORKING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17524, 29 April 1925, Page 7

ART OF WORKING.

jIS DOLE KILLING IT IN BRITAIN ? GLOOMY PICTURE OF LOST TRADE. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. (Received April 29. 10.15 a.m.) SYDNEY, April 29. Albert Spencer, president of 'Tic Auckland Provincial Employers’ Asciation, has arrived in Sydney on his way to New Zealand after a world tour. He says that trade in England is being strangled by foreign competition. aided by the Government dole. Important old-established industries are failing, and foreign countries with low' wages and freedom from strikes are capturing the world’s trade. *■ The competition from which British manufacturers are suffering is so fierce, Mr Spencer says, that they have found themselves engaged in a hopeless fight. Once the Staffordshire potteries were able to compete against all foreign manufacturers, but to-day these famous works are languishing because of the invasion of the British market by Czecho-Slovakia, whose manufacturers are landing cups and saucers in Britain and retailing them at 4s 9d a dozen, while the lowest price at which the British manufacturers can sell them is Ss a dozen wholesale. Other industries were in a similar position. Since the settlement of the Ruhr difficult \', Mr Spencer says, Germany and France had been underselling the British mine-owner b\* 5s a ton, and the result was that there were 100.000 miners unemployed in the United Kingdom. Holland had captured the market for electrical goods. When industrial troubles arose over the reduction in wages and longer hours, the employers shut down the works, and the workmen accepted the half-loaf as better than no bread. The conditions 111 England had reached such a desperate stage that the British manufacturers were being compelled to establish works and factories in other European countries. An English company in Spain had landed slates in England at £l2 10s a thousand. whereas some of the Home manufacturers had to sell at £l7 ss. Referring to the wool trade, Mr Spencer expressed the opinion that the enormous prices that wool was fetching could not be maintained. A new fabric was being manufactured in England, Spain and Italy, one of the constituents of which was wood pulp, the other essential elements being Wool and cotton. The volume of manufacture was increasing rapidly, and the effect of the substitution of cotton and wood pulp in material must in time operate against the prevailing high price of wool. Manufacturing industries generally in Italy were in a flourishing condition, owing to the ability to undersell Britain successfully and to compete with other countries. It seemed that the British workman, on the dole system, had lost the art of working.