Part 3 (1/2)
”Are machines like yours made in England?”
”Yes,” replied the director; ”but they have never been practical or commercial.”
Then he produced the record of the machines he had sold to the government. Each one saved the labour of eight persons and considerable office s.p.a.ce. This made a distinct impression and the company got permission to import two hundred tons of their product. But not even an application for more can be filed until the first of next year. Only the dire necessity for this article, coupled with the fact that it is without British compet.i.tion, got it over.
I cite this incident to show what many Americans in England believe to be one of the real reasons behind the prohibition, which, summed up, is simply this: England is trying to keep out everything that competes with anything that is made in England or that can be made in England!
For some time after the war began our motor cars went in free. Then followed an ad-valorem duty of thirty-three and a third per cent.
Despite this handicap, agents were able to sell American machines, which were both popular and serviceable. The tariff was imposed ostensibly to cut down imports, but mainly to please the British motor manufacturers, who claimed that the surrender of their factories to the government for making munitions left the automobile market at the mercy of the American product, which meant loss of goodwill.
Subsequently a complete embargo was placed on the entry of American pleasure cars and the business practically came to a standstill. What is the result? Let the agent of a well-known popular-priced American car tell his story.
”Before the war and up to the time of the embargo,” he said, ”I was selling a good many American automobiles. With the embargo on cars also came a prohibition of spare parts. It was absolutely impossible to get any into the country. Many of my customers wanted replacements, and, when I could not furnish them, they abandoned the cars I sold them and bought English-made machines whose parts could be replaced.”
All through the motor business in England I found a strong disposition on the part of the British manufacturer and dealer to create a market for his own car as soon as the war is over. Some even talked of a large output of low-priced machines to meet the compet.i.tion of the familiar car that put the automobile joke on the map. The only American comeback to this growing prejudice is to build factories or a.s.sembling plants within the British Isles. This will save excessive freight rates, keep down the costly-tariff ”overhead,” and get the benefit of all the goodwill accruing from the employment of British labour.
A by-product of British exclusion is the inauguration of a Made-in-England campaign. Buy a hat in Regent Street or Oxford Street and you see stamped on the inside band the words, ”British Manufacture.”
This English crusade is more likely to succeed than our Made-in-U.S.A.
attempt, for the simple reason that the government is squarely behind it.
This same spirit dominates newspaper publicity. You find a British fountain pen glowingly proclaimed in a big display advertis.e.m.e.nt, ill.u.s.trated with the picture of men trundling boxes of gold down to a waiting steamer. Alongside are these words:
”The man who buys a foreign-made fountain pen is paying away gold, even if the money he hands across the counter is a Treasury note. The British shop may get the paper; the foreign manufacturer gets gold for all the pens he sends over here. What is the sense of carrying an empty sovereign-purse in one pocket if you put a foreign-made fountain pen in another?”
Behind all this British exclusion is an old prejudice against our wares.
There has never been any secret about it. I found a large body of opinion headed by brilliant men who have bidden farewell to the Hands-Across-the-Sea sentiment; who have little faith in the theory that blood is thicker than water when it comes to a keen commercial clash.
What of the human element behind the whole British awakening? Will organised labour, an ancient sore on the British body, rise up and complicate these well-laid schemes for economic expansion? As with the question of practicability of the Paris Pact, there is a wide difference of opinion.
On one hand, you find the air full of the menace of post-war unemployment and the problem of replacing the woman worker by the man who went away to fight. To offset this, however, there will be the undoubted scarcity of male help due to battle or disease, and the inevitable emigration of the soldier, desirous of a free and open life, to the Colonies.
On the other hand, there is the conviction that unrestricted output, having registered its golden returns, will be the rule, not the exception, among the English artisans. England's frenzied desire for economic authority proclaims a job for everybody.
I asked a member of the British Cabinet, a man perhaps better qualified than any other in England to speak on this subject, to sum up the whole after-war labour situation, as he saw it, and his epigrammatic reply was:
”After the war capital will be ungrudging in its remuneration to labour; and labour, in turn, must be ungrudging in its output.”
No one doubts that after the war the British worker will have his full share of profits. As one large manufacturer told me: ”We have so gotten into the habit of turning our profits over to the government that it will be easy to divide with our employees.” Here may be the panacea for the whole English labour ill.
But, whatever may be the readjustment of this labour problem, one thing is certain: Peace will find a disciplined England. The five million men, trained to military service, will dominate the new English life; and this means that it will be orderly and productive.
With this discipline will come a democracy--social and industrial--such as England has never known. The comrades.h.i.+p between peer and valet, master and man, born of common danger under fire, will find renewal, in part at least, when they go back to their respective tasks. This wiping out of caste in shop, mill and counting room will likewise remove one of the old barriers to the larger prosperity.
England wants the closest trade relations with her Dominions. But will the Colonies accept the idea of a fiscal union of empire, which practically means intercolonial free trade? Or will they want to protect their own industries, even against the Mother Country? Like the French, they are willing to risk life and limb for a cause, but they likewise want to guard jealously their purse and products. They have not forgotten the click when Churchill locked the home door against them.
This leads to the question that is agitating all England: Will peace bring tariff reform? Both English and American economic destiny will be affected by the decision, whatever it may be.