Home Truths for Lancashire
When the civilly-expressed home truths of the Unit States productivity team came home to the British cotto textile industry at the beginning-of the week, a great burst palpably excessive protest rose immediately from Lancashir Some of it gave the impression that it was occasioned not the particular criticisms and suggestions offered by t Americans so much as by the fact that they had ventured criticise at all. Yet that precisely is what they came here 1951 to do. The three British teams which went to the Unit States three years before did so in order to learn from Americ experience and on their return to recommend to the indust such reforms as seemed necessary for increased productivity a general efficiency. The American team came-by invitation look at the progress made in putting into practice the reco mendations of the British teams and to offer any other sugge tions that might be of value (and incidentally, to see if British industry had anything to teach the American). This th did in a friendly spirit. Instead of studying the report in det many (not all) of the leaders of the industry behaved as there was something deliberately malicious in it. But t Americans' recommendations in effect reproduce those ma years ago in British reports. That being so, Lancashire immediate reactions can hardly have given the American crib cause to revise their reluctantly reached conclusion th "complacency, reluctance to depart from things of the pa and lack of incentives are the greatest bathers to productivi and the greatest dangers to the survival of the British cotti. industry."
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