THE INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR, Mr. Kiddy's financial notes are always good and very much appreciated, but his remarks in last week's Spectator as to the necessity for taking off our coats and competing in
grim earnest for trade—domestic and export—ought to command general notice and respect, especially from the business community and the Labour Party. The present depression in trade is largely ascribed to the Ruhr problem, but if this problem were solved to-morrow it would not solve all our difficulties by a long way. Our chief difficulty is that our cost of production is too high, and we cannot sell on the basis of such high costs. In my branch of the woollen trade it costs to-day 2d. per lb. to dye black against d. before the War, and everything else is in proportion. Coal, which cost 5s. 3d. in 1914, costs 16s. to-day. Wages are two and a-half times as high as in 1914, and our overhead expenses, which are also proportionately higher, have to be spread over forty-eight hours instead of fifty-five and a-half hours. We are not allowed to buy our dyewares in the cheapest market, being asked to pay 2s. 8d. per lb. to our Government for what we could—if allowed—buy abroad at 2s.
This comparative dearness is caused in the latter case by Protective legislation, in the former by a maintenance of an artificially high level of wages, bolstered up by our system of paying doles and by the working of the Trade Disputes Act. I am not in favour of low wages as such, but it is folly to maintain an artificially high rate which will not allow us to sell what we produce. We have machinery standing as a consequence, and then go in for unprofitable relief work, or, still worse, paying doles. At a reasonable, not necessarily pre-War level of wages, it ought to be possible in twelve months' time—probably less—to absorb all unemployed workers who are really willing and capable of being employed, which does not by any means include all those who are described as " unemployed." Cost of living would soon show a corresponding fall ; but it cannot now in the nature of things precede a fall in wages, for the cost of everything is chiefly made up of wages in one form or another.—I am, Sir, &c., EDWARD BECKER.
Leeds.
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