MASS PRODUCTION

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18903, 24 March 1933, Page 4

MASS PRODUCTION

An interesting contention has been raised recently in America, where a searching examination of the structure of industry has been forced by the present depression. Tho American idea of industry has been to operate lingo plants and to embark on over increasing output programmes. The result lias been rather to make industry dominate society than to be its servant. From the industiial chaos springing from changed conditions of markets for reasons very often beyond tho control of industry itself, now rises the serious contention in the United States that- the small plant has advantages affording it certain possibilities of success against its giant rivals. The advantages of the small plant include simple organisation and systematic management, which, given broad-minded leadership, are capable of overtaking tlie much vaunted advantages of mass production. The American steel industry lias found it possible to reduce output without affecting production costs. Tho secret lies obviously in economical management, and in America it has reopened the possibility of secondary industry proving a means of decentralisation of population rather than encouraging the drift to big centres of population. Realisation of this more recent trend in American industrial analysis is of considerable importance in consideration of secondary industry in New Zealand. Realisation in America that bigness of plant is not successful in operation, is the answer to immediate doubts of the ability of New Zealand secondary industry to produce on a competitive basis. It also contains tlie answer to doubts created by the assumption that secondary industry, in order to succeed, must he located in one of the big centres of population, and that therefore tho development of secondary industry in New Zealand means an intensification of tlie concentration of an undue proportion of our population in (he teeming cdnstal cities.