Page:The humanizing of commerce and industry, the Joseph Fisher lecture in commerce, delivered in Adelaide, 9th May, 1919.pdf/14

 when brought together under the war-time board, made some extraordinary discoveries. They found in the furniture trade, for instance, that they could afford to cut out half of their two million patterns, and so cheapen the production and sale of standard lines. A committee investigated transport on the railways and found that by altering the sizes of packages of certain goods every inch of space in the railway trucks could be utilized. The equivalent of an additional 125,000 trucks' space was thus secured- This meant in practice a reduction of freight, and enabled a lower selling price to be charged.

Against this organized campaign for eliminating waste effort and getting efficiency in production, Australia will have to compete. It is time we awoke on the business side. Then, too, our system of distribution could not be more ludicrous than it is. We are all familiar with the silly surplus of milk and butchers' carts in our home streets. Do we realize that there is no restriction whatever on shopkeeping other than in regard to the rate of pay and conditions of employees? A man goes out to a growing suburb and starts a retail shop. A year later his prosperous look leads another man to push in and open a second similar shop. The first man was able to run his business on, say, a basis of 15 per cent, on cost, but the advent of a competitor, who gets some of his trade, forces his cost up to 25 per cent. There are now two retailers, each with a separate staff, to divide the trade of the locality. A year later a third man comes in, eventually gets a footing, and the three shopkeepers proceed to fill the public's requirements at a cost of 30 or 35 per cent. Two of them should not be there. One could do all the business. Yet the community permits this wastage of human effort and pays for it. The second and third shopkeepers and their staffs and carts should be prevented from becoming a charge on the community, and should be directed towards some productive employment. The same thing occurs in regard to unnecessary agents. It is no advantage to the community to have scores of agents engaged in selling and re-selling lines of goods, even if they do make a good living. Many of them are doing unnecessary work at the cost of the community, and their energies could, with advantage, be transferred to a productive occupation.

Is it not wonderful that under this disorganization our industrial army of 2,200,000, despite the absence of our soldiers, produced