470 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[June 1, 1919. 



grcss will reaffirm the authority of the War Labor 

 Board as a cooperative tribunal of justice until the 

 conference conclusions are put in effect. The con- 

 gress may be held in either New York or Chicago and 

 its proceedings will be viewed with the greatest in- 

 terest, particularly if President Wilson brings back 

 from his extended stay in Europe some timely sugges- 

 tions regarding the best methods of meeting the 

 changed conditions in the industrial world. 



RESULTS OF GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP. 



AUSTRALLVS experiments with government- 

 owned factories will be regarded with interest 

 in the United States which has a number of govern- 

 ment-owned factories of its own. That Mecca of the 

 labor agitator, the Antipodes, which has tried every ex- 

 periment that offered any novelty savoring of confis- 

 cation or paternalism, has of course gone deeply into 

 government ownership and the report of the United 

 States commercial attache at Melbourne is therefore in- 

 teresting. 



Since 1912, Australia has owned and operated a 

 clothing, cordite, harness and saddlery, woolen fabrics 

 and small arms factories. An acetate of lime plant is 

 being added, which will be subsidiary to the cordite 

 factory. The total output of the factories since their 

 establishment has been $13,997,225. while the total 

 cost of operating has been $13,786,075, which includes 

 depreciation of plant and buildings and interest on a 

 capital investment amounting to $2,392,950. A royal 

 commission which investigated the operation of these 

 factories congratulated the defense department upon 

 the efficiency of their work. 



There is, however, another side not generally 

 known. The labor unionists of Australia are distinctly 

 in the saddle, as witness the defeat of conscription 

 during the war. William Hughes, the commonwealth 

 prime minister, has already been repudiated by the 

 labor-union party because he believed in conscription. 

 The Union party is just now frankly syndicalistic and 

 boldly expresses its admiration for the Bolshevistic 

 government of Russia. The one great tenet of this 

 party just now is repudiation of the public debt. Taxa- 

 tion is top-heavy, and the commonwealth Parliament 

 exacts an income tax graduated from $500 a year up, 

 while the state also exacts 28 cents on every $4.80 

 above $800 a year. All government enterprises are 

 financed with money generally borrowed from Great 

 Britain, sometimes at 5j4 per cent interest. The 

 mortgage on the future is growing day by day, and 

 the plan of the Union party to solve it is by repudia- 

 tion. 



Private enterprise in Australia and cooperative 

 citizenship enterprises are practically nil. During the 

 war the laborites deliberately followed a "go slow" 

 policy. The capacity of a man in the shipyards was 



'^8 rivets a clay, and the average 75. A machine could 

 set 600, but the employers dared not install them for 

 fear of a strike. Strikes are frequent for every cause 

 and no cause. Of course there is a compulsory arbi- 

 tration system and the members of the arbitration 

 board are kept working over time. There are 

 hundreds of thousands of acres awaiting development 

 in Australia and but 5,000.000 people. The opportunity 

 for well-directed capital is abundant, but with the 

 present government it is hardly likely to go there. 

 Americans who advocate government ownership and 

 the rule of labor should ponder Australia's plight before 

 urging their own country to embark upon this same 

 calamitous career. 



HOMES FOR EMPLOYES. 



1 the revival of private building." "Start a 

 local 'Own Your Own Home' Campaign." 



This is the gist of most timely advice given to the 

 governors and mayors at the recent Washington con- 

 ference by Ernest T. Trigg, president of the National 

 Federation of Construction Industries, as the most 

 logical and sound way of stimulating business and 

 absorbing labor. The campaign has been promulgated 

 by the United States Department of Labor and it is 

 urged upon manufacturers and the heads of great 

 industrial establishments as a means of hastening the 

 return of normal peace conditions and general pros- 

 perity. 



It was pointed out that "home owning to-day pays 

 the same ratio of that type of returns that it did be- 

 fore the war, and that every home that is built im- 

 mediately stimulates business locally, and creates the 

 demand for materials and products in more than a 

 hundred correlated industries." Mr. Trigg's division 

 is prepared to furnish definite plans of organization, 

 suggestions for a publicity campaign, and if occasion 

 demands, send an expert to a community to advise. 



Rubber manufacturers have already done much in 

 this line and will doubtless do more. 



"Will we boycott Germany?" is asked and 

 answered by magazine writers of many sorts. Actually 

 the answer is, "We have." Not officially, of course, but 

 individually, quietly and determinedly. As a sign of this, 

 note in the erstwhile American-German restaurants, 

 frankfurters are now Liberty sausages ; in the depart- 

 ment stores rubber toys "Made in Gerinany" are no 

 longer displayed, but are relegated to the "unsalable" 

 section. This will not continue forever, nor should it; 

 that is up to the Germans themselves. Instead of smug 

 self-satisfaction, continued propaganda, and hypocritical 

 expressions of esteem for us and ours, they should face 

 the music, acknowledge their crimes, repent and make 

 full restitution 



