PAY OR STARVE.
Unfortunately, however, we are literally compelled to maintain a certain minimum volume of imports or we should starve. As regards our exports, . on the other hand, few of them are concerned with the neces- saries of life and most of them being in the nature of manufactures are subject to the purchasing power of our foreign customers and are subject also to com- petition on the part of other countries engaged in these same manufactures. Until recent years, and, indeed, until the time of the Great War, it had scarcely become an urgent matter, for in the matter of our invisible exports we were largely living upon the results of the thrift of our forefathers, whilst it is since the War that foreign competition in the matter of manufactured goods has become so intense.
Yet it is with plain facts like these staring us in the face that since 1918 we have had many years of reckless extravagance on the part of successive Governments in the matter of unproductive social outlays, while wage-earners, presumably in ignorance of the stern requirements of the situation, have demanded conditions in the matters of wages, hours of working and so forth utterly out of keeping with the -requirements of tit situation. Organizers of industry, -too, have failed to grasp the seriousness of the position or they would, in some instances, have fought the demands of Labour more strongly, or in others would have seen the necessity for improved methods, greater co-operation between competing concerns at home and greater economies in other directions perhaps than actual wages if foreign competition was to be met successfully. Moreover, the orgy of Government extravagance already referred to has not only, through taxation, encroached upon the capital resources of the individual but has harassed industry in many directions.
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