AUSTRALIAN-MADE

Dominion, 14 August 1919, Page 6

AUSTRALIAN-MADE

POPULARISING OWN TRADE PRODUCTS

Out of the war has arisen a new Australia—an Australia which realises that it has drawn the respect of all nations, that ils name has been written large in the view of other nations. And there is realisation, -too, that Australia is not merely a land of possibilities, and not only a land of great primary wealth, but that it has also tho capacity to plan, to build, and achieve results m all directions in which civilised communities are working. It is with a view to the cultivation and development of this sentiment, and the encouragement of Australians to make their country self-sun-porting and self-reliant, that (as briefly cabled the other day) a campaign, backed by the Chamber of Manufactures, the lioturned Sailors and Soldiers' Imperial League of Australia, the Australian Natives' Association, tho National Economy Association of New South Wales, and a number of other bodies, will hi instituted to promote feeling in favour of Australian-made articles, and the building-up of Australian industries. Tho object-lesson of tho war will be put forward prominently. Tho men who wero good workmen in the red trade of war are not likely to be poor workers in the trades of Peace. And the men who showed genius in the arts <ind organising feats of war. were- the men -who had been our lenders of industry, and who, with the said exception of those who fell, will return to lead industrially again. Work of Australians. Professor David, upon his return from the front, gave striking proof of the capacity of Australians to stand equal with," and often in front of, the men of the big nations in devising and manufacturing war—a test harder than that of devising and manufacturing tho instruments of ordinary trade. Professor David gtated that the tiring of tho 19 immense guns at Messines was almost entirely arranged by Major R. V. Morse, D.5.0., an engineer in the New South Wales Government Tramway Department, and that the firing was done with machines which he had brought with him from Sydney. All the principal tuuusls. for mining, subways for the delivery and transport of infantry, and hundreds of big dug-outs for the accommodation of infantry were electrically lighted, ventilated and kept dry with electrical pumps, by means of machinery brought from Australia. The work of deciding by experiment what was the best type of listening apparatus to ibcitto the position of enemy counter-uiine3 was entrusted entirely to' Major J. A. Pollock, Professor of Physics at the Sydney University; and tho powerful drills with which the bores wero made to enable mines to bo laid under Vimy Kidge, for explosion just prior to the great infantry attack, wore wombat drills, manufactured partly in Melbourne and partly in Sydney. Many other similar illustrations wero given by Professor David. No other soldiers, it has been declared with authority, were as well shod, clad, and equipped as those who were so provided by Australian factories. _ Our soldiers wore, as a matter of fact, the finest publicity agents possible for Australia's manufacturing capacity. Can Australians doubt themselves longer? Cnii they ever feel again, as they undoubtedly once did, that anything imported must be better than that which is Australianninde? • Trade Drives. Such are the questions which will be raised by tho campaign , . It will also urge the pressing need of promoting the return to civil life and to jobs of the soldiers who fought to make Australia a nation; the benefit to the Empire of making Australia self-reliant mnd a, self-supporting Dominion; the dire necessity, because, of the huge load of debt which the war has left, of preventing a penny of unnecessary money from going ont of the country for tho purchase of goods from abroad, when similar ones of local manufacture can be obtained. The plans of the great manufacturing nations to conduct trade drives in tho territory or less developed nations will bo stressed. And it will be pointed out that the object of these trado drives , is quite naturally for the purpose of enabling the countries conducting them to promote the repatriation of their own soldiers, to lighten by increased production their own grievous w burdens of taxation and to lessen their own unemployment problems.