NEW INDUSTRIAL LONDON

Waipa Post, Volume 81, Issue 3691, 29 November 1935, Page 2

NEW INDUSTRIAL LONDON

Our tongue would be the richer by an unsurpassed piece of invective if the ghost of Cobbett could return and read the Board of Trade's report on cne year's economic growth of the Great Wen, says the London Daily Telegraph in a recent leading article. Last year 478 new factories were opened in the whole of Britain, and of these as many as 209 were in Greater London, which, on the other hand, contributed only 162 to the total of 515 factories closed. The process by which industry seeks to be near its greatest market has its origin in economic causes, but it is instructive to see how the tariff helps in this as in other developments. Thirty-four foreign concerns started production in Britain last year, and 21 of them selected factory sites in the London area.

Examined in detail, the Board of Trade survey illustrates two other tendencies of modern industry. The first is the decline of our (British) textile trade. Textiles are Responsible for 153 of the factories closed, more than a quarter of the. total. Of these 99 manufactured cotton. The high figures are evidence not only of the falling off in our international trade in this material, but also of the growing inability of the small concern to survive under modern conditions; for the cotton trade as a whole was doing better in 1934 than in the years immediately preceding. The other point is the growing influence of modern methods of production in the clothing trade. Tailoring, in particular, has resisted the modern factory system until well into the. present century. Now, however, the industry is in transition, as is shown by the figures of 109 old factories closed and 122 new factories opened. These same figures also illustrate the shift of economic emphasis from production to distribution. The new distributive methods adopted by the trade have worked back and are now acting on its productive structure.