What is wrong with the British iron and steel industry?

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1868556093

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-249484

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: What is wrong with the British iron and steel industry?

Place of publication:: [London

Publisher:: The London Caledonian Press]

Year of publication:: 1931

Scope:: 23 S.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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an Iron and Steel Industrial Research Council, acting in conjunction with the Government Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, designed to effect economy in the use of fuel and secure by research the fullest technical improvement in iron and steel production. The question that arisés, however—and this is without doubt the crux of the whole position that now presents ‘tself—is whether these developments and the isolated sfforts of individual firms to keep their plant up-to-date are sufficient to enable the industry to re-establish its position when compared with the progress made by its :ompetitors in other countries. We submit that all past experience goes to show that nothing short of a national planning and conscious control of the industry will meet the situation. Such a policy, no doubt, requires a higher standard of industrial leadership than one of uneconomic, cut-throat competition with its accompaniment of reducing wages and degrading of labour conditions, but in the long run it will produce more healthy, stable and efficient industry. Some form of national control could be justified if only to protect the more progressive units against the selfish individualism and short-sighted policy of others, but it has much wider implications, national and international in character and importance. . While the analogy may not be complete in every respect, the example of the German iron and steel industry is a striking demonstration of the value of organisation and the co-ordination of interests, even under private enterprise, in enabling a basic industry, despite extraordinary financial, political and economic difficulties, to rehabilitate itself as the second greatest producer in the world. It is customary when comparing Great Britain with Germany and other Continental countries, to emphasise the difference in wages and hours of labour. We do not seek to disguise the~ competitive effect of unorganised abour in such countries as Belgium, France and Poland. Even so, the test of lajour conditions upon price is not she rates of wages, but the labour cost per unit of pro- iuction, under comparable conditions of efficiency, and, ap to the present, no comparative figures under that head have been produced. In any case, so far as Germany is concerned, we venture to assert that when the British iron and steel industry has been placed in an equal degree of efficient organisation and control, it need have no fear of Germany as a com- petitor in a fair field and po favour. At the same time, the British producer will be in a more satisfactory posi- tion to bargain for international trade with his foreign competitors than is now the case. As a fact, organisation has been impressed upon the industry from one authority or another for over a quarter (12

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