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Aviation History
1918
1918 - 0958.PDF
AUGUST 29, that her industries have been enabled to pile up huge out by machinery made in the country. It is not sums of money as capital for the post-bellum struggle very far short of being literally true to say that for commercial supremacy. Not even the income neither imports a single machine tool from outside. ^ tax has been increased by Germany, while our own has As an example of the magnitude of the German sailed up to a figure which, excess profits tax apart we should have thought fantastic five years ago;' ~ There is an aspect of this excessive taxation to which we have not seen attention called. That is the recklessness of expenditure engendered in those who have to pay the enormous imposts which are industry, the writer stated that the value of the machine tools made in Germany in 1917 was £40,000,000. The value of our own output— achieved under stress of war and the necessity for a great output—he estimated at about a quarter of that sum ! As to pre-war figures, the Germans in 1912 levied under the name of excess profits and income exported machine tools to the value of £3,000,000, tax. We were talking the other day to a well-known while the value of our own exports was less than business man in his private office, and mentioned £750,000 in 1912. that we noticed certain alterations had been carried Now, it is abundantly clear that, apart altogether out. He agreed that they had, and said that they from any questions affecting our industrial position added to his comfort but were really quite un- necessary, and were it not that 80 per cent, of the in relation to other countries, one of the first essentials of Imperial defence is a solidly established machine cost came out of his taxes they would not have be.en tool industry. Modern war is very largely machine-made. It is true that according to some super- sensitive auditors, this is not legitimate. Neverthe- less that sort of thing is going on all round, and it is producing a most undesirable effect, for there is nothing that so soon becomes an ineradicable habit as the spending of money. It is an unhealthy made, as we found before the great conflict was two months old. By the end of 1914 we were faced with the need for extending and fully equipping our machine shops to cope with an enormous and quite unforeseen demand for guns and shells and all the paraphernalia of twentieth-century war. Obviously, condition of things, even though it be a comparatively the prime necessity was machine tools wherewith tominor evil in relation to the greater issues. But it is nevertheless symptomatic of the carelessness with equip our new and extended munition factories, and to do that with nothing to help but a semi-moribund which we have come to regard all matters of finance, industry which had fallen hopelessly behind our There is plenty of money afloat—everyone has it, except the unfortunate middle-class who have made nothing out of the war and are called upon to pay through the nose for everything—and Government and people alike have ceased to regard it as having any value. But all these are side issues compared with that of the post-war situation of industry, shorn by super-taxation of the wherewithal to carry out the necessary work of reconstruction. We see no hope of the Government abandoning its present methods of " sound " finance, which are storing up endless trouble and difficulty for the future, and we can only view that future with profound apprehension. TheBritish MachineTool Industry. Very closely related to the production of aircraft as it is, the machine tool industry of Britain has been the subject of considerable discussion of late among those who are taking a principal part in its development. In this con- nection we have before us a most interesting paper read recently by Mr. J. Judson, in Birmingham. Tracing the history of the British machine tool industry during the past quarter of a century, the writer of the paper pointed out that the business has been sadly neglected. Whereas 30 years ago we were well in front of the rest of the world, in the interim we have easily been passed by both America and Germany. This has brought about the position that of the machinery needed to construct an aero engine from 70 per cent, to 80 per cent, is of foreign origin. It is the same in connection with the manufacture of rifles, machine guns, motor cars, typewriters, sewing machines—anything, in fact, principal enemy. We were, therefore, compelled to rely mainly on America for the tools we needed. We got them, as it happened, but it might easily have been that we should not for any one of a number of obvious leasons.- If we had not, it does not require any great depth of vision to see that our neglect of an essential industry would have lost us the Empire, for without machine tools we could never have produced the material necessary for the conduct of the war and we must have been beaten. Why, then, has so important an industry, in which we once held an easy lead, been so neglected ? Is it that British brains and British inventiveness are so inferior that we were incapable of holding our own ? We refuse to believe it. Or was it due to our fiscal system, which freely admitted foreign machine tools to our market to compete on the most favourable terms with our own products the while the latter were penalised beyond hope of effective competition in the foreign markets ? It may be that here is the root cause. At least it is fit subject for reflection. But whatever the reason, it is for the machine tool in- dustry of this country to see that such measures,- fiscal or other, as are necessary to re-establish it as one of our basic trades are taken at once in prepara- tion for post-war conditions—as soon as the Govern- ment can be persuaded to state what the trade policy of this country is to be after the war. RaidingFrankfort. As if in response to what was writtenm a number of British journals—includ- ing „ FLIGHT "_Frankfort was raidedthe other day and a considerable weight of bombs dropped on the headquarters of cosmopolitan finance. into which automatic and semi-automatic processes And a very salutary effect it appears to have had. enter in the course of that manufacture. Now; if it were a question of exchange, so to say, and we could export to foreign countries such machine tools as they cannot make for themselves, the position would not be so bad. It is a fact, however, that both in Germany and in America all these processes are carried The egregious Wilhelm, apparently with the feeling that it was up to him to show ch^ap sympathy with the town to which he mainly looks to make his re- current war loans a success, has indulged in crocodile tears at the iniquity of the hated British in bombing an " open town 1 " We confess to a feeling of intense 956
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