TO-DAY’S TURMOIL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 118, 21 May 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

TO-DAY’S TURMOIL

A SURVEY OF CAUSES POLICIES AND THEIR PRICES. (Specially Written for the “Chronicle” hy R.S.) A Xi man who preaches a “get rich quick” doctrine to the people is either dishonest or foolish. Dishonest if, to serve his pnvato ends, he makes a misleading use of its allurements, and explains to his followers what he will do when their support, has placed him in a position from which he shall be able to deal out the rich rewards to which they have become entitled through befriending him; foolish it lie really believes that he shall bo able to benefit his fellows by helping to introduce legislation that will instantly clear tho clouds from the commercial atmosphere, and start, the industrious and tho idler alike, on equal terms, with a plentiful supply of money earned with the least possible amount of physical exertion. " We all look forward confidently to the return of more prosperous times, but they will not return at the bid of the windy Labour agitator, nor those of similar parasitical inclinations, but by hard thinking; hard work- and earcful study of how public finances may bo sufficiently strengthened ’to give us a fair chance of pulling through the present depression without shipwreck. . ~ If we may take a lead from former experience, a change of the tide will surelv set in at no far distant date. At the annual balance, on March 31 of last year, the trade of the Australian Commonwealth was shown to have made a wonderful recovery from the depression of the year before; the exports from Australia being now three times the value of the imports. Certainly the tightness of the money market has reduced imports to a minimum, but, making all allowance for that, there is great hope for the future of a country that can table a balance-sheet showing such a comfortable margin on the safe side. Five thousand miles away across the seas, the Japanese are discarding cotton and linen wear in favour of woollen having, apparently, discovered that woollen clothing is not only much more .comfortable, and healthy, but is, in the end, the more economical by reason of its greater durability. Catching the infection from their neighbours across the Yellow Sea tho Chinese arc also going in for woollen fabrics, and the Government has voted £750,000 for the erection of woollen mills, and the purchase of machinery; from the sheepowners’ view-point, the wisest thing the Chinamen have done for many a long year. They have at least made a start in the right direction, and when more fully developed the industry will furnish means of living to thousands of the overcrowded population.

A very important question is: “How will such competition affect English millowners and operatives?” for a low rate of wage will enable the Chinese to turn out a good article at a very low price. Mr. Stanley Baldwin, speaking a few years ago at a public meeting, on the problem set the British manufacturers in competing with Continental houses where labour was cheaper, said: “ Let me give an illustration. I have a letter before me now from a British firm which has works in this country (England), works in France, and works in Germany. And the making of a machine of exactly similar type costs £565 in Britain; £520 in Germany; and in France £4OO. Now all those concerned in industry should try to get at the root of the reason why a thing of this kind is possible.” Later on the English people showed their appreciation of Mr. Baldwin’s inquiring disposition by turning his government out of office, and, in its stead, installing by their own sweet will a Labour Government which, by making extravagant provision for the relief of the unemployed (among whom there is, unfortunately, a large and increasing percentage of men and women who will not work under any circumstances) have succeeded in running the Ship of State ashore, high and dry.

Mr. Baldwin, in his address, could have easily pointed out the “root of the itiason” why a similar machine made in Germany costs 8 per cent, less—and, made in France, 29 per cent, less than in Britain, for he was for twenty years an active member of tho firm of Baldwin’s Ltd., Ironfounders; but ho exhibits the same delicacy in dealing with matters intimately connected with the every day life of the bulk of the electors that is noticeable in the public utterances of a great majority of our politicians in Britain and tho Dominions; therefore he contents himself with stating his case and leaving his solution to the intelligence of his audience, or of the newspaper readers. It is not a difficult problem to solve. Speaking of his life at the iron foundry, Mr. Baldwin explained: "It was a place where I knew, and had known from childhood, every man on the ground . . . . where nobody ever got “sacked,” and where we had a natural sympathy for those who were less concerned in efficiency than in this generation, and where a large number of old gentlemen used to spend their days sitting on the handles of wheelbarrows, smoking their pipes.” If Mr. Baldwin had bluntly, and truthfully, stated that, the higher rate of wages paid to the British workman made it impossible for the British manufacturer to survive in competition with the French opposition houses, he would have wounded the feelings of the “old gentlemen sitting on tho handles of the wheelbarrows” and their offspring, still toiling cheerfully in the iron foundries; and also the feelings of contemporary workers in other parts. The French artisan is in private life a strict economist; he lives thriftily, and saves money off a wage that his British fellow workman would decline to accept. He takes up, and continues to subscribe to shares in building societies; and gets assistance from the workers’ bank to build and furnish a home for himself and family; those co-operative establishments being a great help to the workers who are worth assisting. When occasionally out of work the French operative has frequently tho knowledge and tools to employ his time at some other occupation in his own home, where he is free of that weekly nightmare—the rent collector. Trade unions, first legalised under the "Trade Union Acts. 1871 and 1876,” have proved of immense benefit in bettering the conditions of the British workers; in raising tho wage, and shortening the hours of labour; in discharging the offices of benefit societies by attending to the needs of the sick and disabled; in providing superannuation allowances, and by various other means of adding to the comfort of their members. At the beginning of last century reformation of the conditions under which the workmen lived was badly needed. He was miserably underpaid, and, consequently, compelled to live in a manner that, if known to exist at the present day, would raise a storm of indignant protest.

It took fifty years of patient study and •discussion, and much parliamentary oratory, to turn out a satisfactory code of laws and regulations in the year 1876, and, for a time, all was comparative peace. But the necessary direction and discipline of the numerous unions gradually enrolled in their service an army of officials and underlings, who, perhaps, anxious to show their devotion to the welfare of the workers, busied themselves in introducing regulations of an. extreme description which, like the American tariff, have reacted with baneful results to the welfare of the people they profess to be anxious to help. The American Cabinet hoarded up about three-quarters of tho wealth of the world, and then sat down on their treasure chest and said: “We have accumulated wealth, we can now take our ease and make other nations work for us.” But, with all their business “eutenesS;” they made a mistake. The allied nations, in their tuYn, said: "There is nothing in this American attitude that brings any return to our people, so we may as well take a spell, and consider the best means of carrying on without America.” So American trade began to fizzle out, and Jonathan’s own children gathered round him and cried: "You are starving us. The money in the national coffers is no use 1o us. You have deprived the other nations of the means of trade with us through exacting their money, and piling up high protection duties. What is the use of the accumulated funds if they are not put in circulation?” The American Cabinet did not reply as our own British and Dominion Parliaments probably would have done had they been as flush of cash: “We have any quantity of money, so we will relieve you by opening up waste lands and mines, and making tar-sealed roads ami railway lines galore; raise the workers’ wages to a record limit. Fill the land with strikes and labour riots, and have a high old time while the money lasts.” The Americans, finding that they had made a mistake in cornering the wealth of the world, did not admit the error, but brought Mr. Hoover on tho stage to makq the allied nations the magnanimous offer of twelve months’ relief from payment of reparation moneys, and interest. Had they made it five years, or even seven years’ moratorium to give it a fair trial, much might be said in favour of the proposal, but a year’s spell seems very inadequate under the many adverse circumstances. On their part, the trades union executives succeeded in raising wages and shortening hours of work until prudential limits were overstepped, and manufacturing firms were forced cither to dose down, or become bankrupt. Then, having put the mon out of action whom they apparenly consider their natural enemies, though many of the leading industrialists are workmen who, by attention to business and frugality, have raised themselves from the ranks, they find themselves faced by unemployment on a formidable scale. After many of the principal means of earning a living are closed, and, practically, the last cent has been extracted from the industrialists with brains and experience, who. with a fair chance, might be of benefit to the communities they live in. what it) going to happen ? The statesmen of America were not far-seeing enough to judge the result of impoverishing the allied nations, ami framing a prohibitive tariff, on their own working people, nor did the over-zealous trades union executives foresee the disastrous reaction of high wages and short hours on tho future welfare of the British working people, yet both of those ventures have worked out exactly as the promoters should have foreseen.