Engineering Will Lead Recovery S PEAKING at Birmingham last week on
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" Factories, Finance and Freedom," Viscount Davidson, president of the Engineering Industries, declared that we have nothing whatever to fear as regards the future. He believed that we were on the threshold of a tremendous recovery, and that engineering, despite all its apparent difficulties, will lead it. He pinned his faith largely oil the law of supply and demand, which, in an expanding world, can become almost inexhaustible.
As regards production operatives, if we make proper use of the people released from the Services and war industries, there should be no shortage of these. The natural tendency of the M. of L. officials is to suggest types of work that are temporarily urgent but not necessarily the most permanent. We must also have regard to other classes of task that may not, at the moment, appear to be of the highest priority.
He was anxious that we should learn to regard each worker in an entirely new light, and by the application of science and research, together with the latest engineering practice, enable him to become of the greatestvalue to the Nation and to himself. If, by this means, we can raise the output per ma-hour, higher wages can be paid
and a higher standard of living achieved without long working hours and special increases of effort such as operated during the war. He hoped that the trades unions would help with constructive ideas and the proper instruction of their members regarding what is at stake and the factors involved.
In connection with materials, there is none which the Empire itself cannot supply. On the other hand, we should continue to expand. our goodwill throughout the world in the field of high-quality and specialized products. We would have to adopt an industrial system which provides for a*substantial measure of mass production.
We are short of factories, particularly modern types, in which operators can work under best conditions. He urged, that some measure of new ' factory building should rank equally with house building. It would be of little use to give -operators good houses if they had no places to work in. Financially, engineering is in a terrible position, and nothing less than the adoption of new drastic measures can deal adequately with it, The Association is engaged, in diseussions with the leading .banks and finance, corporations in a-n . endeavour to obtain assistance for its members.