International trade

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1758394757

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136209

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Taussig, Frank William http://d-nb.info/gnd/120199459

Title:: International trade

Place of publication:: New York, NY

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: XXI, 425 Seiten; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part II. Problems of verification

Collection:: Economics Books

DIFFERENCES IN LABOR COSTS 175 geneity is by no means complete. Japanese yarn, for example, tho it be of the same count as the American, is inferior in quality. The inferiority, as it happens, is not a handicap to the Japanese yarn in China, the chief market to which it is exported; tho it would very much affect the sale if exports were made to the United States or to a European country. The same inferiority appears in the woven cloths. The differences in quality serve to render even more striking the comparisons which follow, since these make no allowance for the poorer quality of the Japanese product. The outstanding fact is that the output per laborer employed is four times as great in the United States as in Japan. The output of yarn (number 20, 7.e. medium yarns) per spinner is 104 pounds per day in Japan, 414 per day in the United States. The output per weaver is 145 yards daily in Japan; it is 450 yards per day in the United States on plain looms, 1100 yards on automatic looms. Plain looms in the United States are obsolescent for fabrics of the kind selected for this comparison. Only older mills still use them ; the automatic loom is the representative apparatus. Both for spinning and weaving, some qualification needs to be attached to the comparisons. The American spinner has the aid of a doffer boy or girl; the American weaver on automatic looms has the aid of a similar attendant who supplies fresh bobbins. But the inclusion of this additional American labor would affect the final figures but little. Nor would they be much affected by the inclusion of still another item ; namely, the higher capital cost of the automatic loom. I have already indicated in what way this circumstance should be taken into account ;! it can be of but slight effect on the total of labor involved per unit of output. The same contrast appears, and no less strikingly, when it is presented in the inverse way. We may ask what is the number of workmen employed per unit of machinery, thus envisaging not the number of units produced per workman but the number of workmen per unit of product. “A Japanese cotton mill requires approxi- mately four times as many employees for the same amount of machinery as does a similar American mill. . . . On a standard 1 Chapter 7. pp. 68 ef seq.

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