Abstract
THE Cotton Industry (Reorganization) Act, which has since reached the Statute Book, is the subject of a further broadsheet issued by P E P (Political and Economic Planning). The Cotton Industry Board to be appointed by the Board of Trade will be representative of all sections of the industry in addition to having three independent whole-time members, including the chairman, with special knowledge of the industry. The Board will appoint, partly from among its own members, a special Export Development Committee, which will have the particular duty of making recommendations regarding the export trade. Cotton and rayon interests will be equally represented on the Committee and the other principal bodies in the industry will be the Cotton Industry Advisory Committee, charged with examination of the sectional schemes, and the Representative Advisory Council. Provision is also made for the establishment of a separate Rayon Industry Committee. Producers are compelled and merchants permitted to register with the Cotton Industry Board, but merchants will only be registered if they agree to abide by the contracts prescribed in sectional price schemes. Sectional schemes, which to become legally binding must be supported in a poll by the majority of the section concerned and approved by the Board, may relate to the elimination or reduction of redundant plant or to the fixing of prices. the broad-sheet emphasizes the importance of marketing policy, the need for market research, the urgency of establishing central marketing arrangements, the necessity of a more enlightened labour policy than that which has short-sightedly sought exemptions from the Factories Act which reduced the juvenile working week from 48 to 44 hours, as well as the importance of implementing the permissive clause of the Act which allows the compensation of operatives displaced by redundancy schemes. Only long-term measures of this character can overcome the operatives’ real and natural fear of technical change and eliminate the labour troubles which have contributed to the industry's difficulties.
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Re-organization of the Cotton Industry. Nature 144, 409–410 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144409d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144409d0