The World in Chains (WWI Centenary Series) by John Mavrogordato

Author:John Mavrogordato [Mavrogordato, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Western Europe, Military, World War I
ISBN: 9781473367425
Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
Published: 2016-03-10T05:00:00+00:00

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.

SOME TYPICAL WAR PROFITS

I. The Manchester Guardian, January 3, 1916:

BRITISH INDUSTRY IN WAR

The first full calendar year of war has been a period of unparalleled industrial activity and, generally speaking, prosperity in this country. Heavy losses and bad times have been encountered in a few important industries, but these are balanced by unprecedented profits made by a large variety of industries, whether directly or indirectly affected by the war. One frequently finds that the neutral visitor carries away with him an impression of industrial England as one great living arsenal. That is not surprising, as since July last the Munitions Ministry has erected (or improvised) and started a large number (it is not permissible to say how many) of State munitions works, and it has also mobilised the whole engineering resources of the nation to such an extent that in the first week of December no fewer than 2026 manufacturing establishments had been declared “controlled firms.”

But it would be a mistake to suppose that, while war manufactures prospered, all other industry languished and decayed. To prove the contrary and show that only here and there were there heavy losses, we may quote some figures compiled by the Economist, which show that 720 industrial concerns publishing their reports during the first nine months of 1915, and having a capital of £531,678,701, made profits amounting to £52,881,300, or under 2-1/4 millions less than in the previous year (which in the case of almost all the reports was a year before the war).

Dissecting these figures, we find that not only iron, coal, steel, and shipping companies report enormous profits, but that increased earnings were shown by breweries, gas, rubber, oil, and trust companies, and others. The large exceptions which depressed the total profits were textile companies (other than those engaged on war contracts), catering, and cement companies. Shipping leads the van of prosperity owing to phenomenal freight rates, while iron and steel and shipbuilding, as direct and established purveyors of armaments, are close behind. As showing the industrial tendency of the year, one may quote the remarks of a trust company chairman at a recent meeting. Of 150 home investments possessed by his company, he remarked that a hundred had since the war yielded the same as in the year before war, while thirty had paid less and twenty more.

Into the circle of munition producers have been drawn cycle and motor, machinery, electrical, and many other branches of manufacture. Of other industries driven to fever heat by the war may be mentioned woollen and leather factories. Secondary effects of the war also produced a boom in several unexpected quarters. For instance, the high wages earned by war workers, and too generously spent in a vast number of cases, led to a strong demand for cheap furniture, pianos and many types of household goods which in normal times are usually out of reach of the purse of most wage-earners. But one trouble has beset all industries in common—a shortage of labour,

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