TO WHAT END?

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 134, 23 June 1937, Page 4

TO WHAT END?

There is to be fotind in the i'eport, contmued to-day, of the president 's address at the annual meeting of the Hastings Chambef of Commerce mtlch matter that is worthy of serious consideartion by those who liave the permanent welfare of the country at heart and especially of those who are anxious to see the stlil lai'ge number of unemployed substantially reduced- With an intimate knowledge of the subjects whereof he speaks, he tells us, in the first place, that it is impossible to secure even from manufacturing concerns long established in the Dominion anything like an adequate supply of their wares for which there is a strong demand among retail tomers(In the second place such supplies as are made available , can be obtained only at increased prices which disqualify I them for successful competition -with like imported articles. This does not, of course, mean that the manufacturers are seekifig to make excessive profits. It merely means that the cost of production has been so forced up that the higher prices have to be charged if the industries are to be kept going. One result; so we are told, is that- Australian manufacturers, able to sell at a lower figure and still make their customary profit, are capturing a big share of the NeW Zealand market for goods hitherto coming from New Zealand industries which provide employment for a very large number of hands and at the same time absorb a big Volume of raw material — wool in particular — produced in the country. The almost inevitable outcome must be that these industries will in the end be starved out and their employees thrown out of work. In the meantime, of course, there are serious inoreases in the cost to the eventual consumers, of whom the main body is to be found among the xvage-earners themselves and others of like small income. As againsb this there is no compensation of reciprqcal trade for there is no market in Australia for any substantial volume of New Zealand products of any kind. It is suggested that the position might be bettered by imposing some fairly high import duties upon Australian goods> but that is certainly not likely to do much in the way of reducing prices to the ultimate consumers and so helping to check the continually rising cost oi living of which all are complaining, bnt which necessarily bears most heavily upon those of slender resources, whether they he present-day wrage-earners or those deriving limited incomes from the savings of many years of probably much more arduous toil under much less favourabJe conditions. In all this we merely see the inescapable immediate effects of the haste with which our new Government — it is still new so far as experience of reshlts goes — has set itse-lf to bring about a new Eutopia for one particular class. There were few, if any, who were not prep.ared to approve the restoratiori of wages to their pre-depression level, but when right on top of this came the 40-hour week — -for which there wals really no urgent call — with the serious extra outgo it involved it was impossible for industries previously earning only reasonable profits and still staggering under the effects of the long years of the depression to stand up under the much heavier burdens they were thus compelled to shoulder- The sole alternative for them, if they were to survive a.t all, was to put up the prices of their products. Then, of course> have followed, on the plea of reorganisation, rationalisation, rehabilitation and all the rest of the polysyllabic pretexts, Acts and regulations without number imposing all sorts of restraints and restrictions under which none but 'nnatics would think of venturing fresh capital to institute new industries that might have helped materially to reduce the number of the unemployed. As for the "smaller" men of vision, enterprise, energy and persistence — such as in the past have started in a small w.ay industries that in the end ha.ve meant well-paid work for hundreds, even thousands? they have been utterly discouraged and under present conditions will soon be as extinct as the moa. The only rational conclusion that seems open to be drawn is that the Government is working along insidiously to its declared purpose of eventually taking everything into / its own hands — all means of production, distribution and exchange — and is bent upon bringing about general conditions under which everybody will be glad to let go. There is nothing extravagant in this suggestion, as anyone with eyes to see will recognise if he only Iooks back over the legislation and administration of the last nineteten months.