Hughes, William Morris, 1864-1952; Lloyd George, David, 1863-1945; World War, 1914-1918 -- Economic aspects
"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 competition 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 assembling 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 advertisement,
illustrated 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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