INDUSTRIES AND THE WAR.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16159, 13 March 1918, Page 7

INDUSTRIES AND THE WAR.

LOCAL MAX TFACTUIIES IXCREASED. PROTECTIVE TARIFF URGED. A large increase in industrial development resulting from the war is reported from Australia, where, according to the "Sydney Daih Telegraph,'' many firms are spending largo sums to increase their production, while fifty new industries eould bo written down off-hand. Enquiries made among Christchurch business-men by a "Press" representative yesterday as to whether New Zealand was making a similar effort elicited some items of interest in connexion with the effect of the war upon local industries.

"The war has done the neople of the British Empire a great service, in that it has established a realisation of the necessity lor them to become sell-sup-porting in the iidlest sense of the term," declared Mr .A. I\ Drayton, president of the Christehu/ch Industrial Association. "There are many instances of local industries which have been established in the Dominion as a direct result of the war. while others have materially expanded >n output. Numbered among the latter is ihc clothing trade. Prior to the war a great majority of ready-to-wear garments came from England, but owing to the high freights ruling, plus the difficulty of securing supplies from Home, large numbers of retailers have been forced to sceure these garments locally. The result is that the local •retailers are able to give better value, while the cut and the make compares very favourably with that of the imported goods. The onlv difficulty is the shortage of labour and the lack of material. The carpet-making industry, started in a small way, and the toy trade, are both capable of expansion, and both could form an outlet for the energy and enterprise of disabled soldiers."

Pi •oceeding. Mr Drayton enumerated a number nf instance's of industries which had sprung up or developed as a result of war conditions. Rennet, for example, he s?aid, was formerly imported from Holland at three to lour shillings a gallon. When the price, owing to war conditions, went up to thirty to fifty shillings a gallon, aiul was even then unobtainable, local enterprise came to the rescue. Ileforo the war most of our glue and gelatine camc from enem.v countries. Glue was now being, made b.v a New Zealand company from "glue pieces'' obtained from the freezing works. Again, the existing potteries in Christchurch wore doing invaluable work in developing new lines to meet the shortages duo to the war, and the enterprise of a local business man in the establishment in the south of a pottery capable of turning out high-class enamel sanitary ware was highly spoken of. The speaker then referred to Lake Coleridge, which had made possible the establishment of a score of industries which would have been out of reach years ago. Before the war practically all our chemicals were imported, and many of these were now at prohibitive prices, if not actually unobtainable. Lake Coleridge, however, had already enabled sulphate of iron, which was formerly imported by the gas companies for purifying gas, to be replaced by hydrate of iron, which was produced from the old tins from the destructor. Further development of the same industry would yield an iron oxide paint quite equal to that previously imported, and arrangements were a I.so being made for the manufacture of caustic soda, hydro-chloric acid, and other chemicals. The distillation of coal tar, too, offered a field for enterprise staggering in its possibilities, and a plant had recently been erected near Christchurch to undertnke the establishment of what should be a very profitable industry. Another war-born local industry was the j iron rolling mills near Christchurch. These mills bought up. the thousands of tons of scr.ap iron which used to be wasted every year in the Dominion and I turned it into bar iron of good quality.

Interviewed with reference to the same subject, Mr A. W. .Tnmieson said that several factors militated against New Zealand's new industries attaining the mushroom-liko growth of thoso of Australia. In the first place the Dominion lackcd the man-power which Australia, owing to her position with regard to conscription, possessed. Again. Australia jealously fostered her own manufactures by building round them a high protective tariff wall. New Zealand's tariff, he considered, required to he gone into exhaustively before local industrv would receive much stimulus. The greatest possible protection must be extended to any new industries, created through war conditions, otherwise in the day of financial stress that is forecasted at the conclusion of the war it would go ill indeed with them, and worse still with °nv country which had not the local industries to help her meet the excessive taxation that will follow the declaration of peace.