New Zealand’s Need of Development.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 July 1922, Page 1

New Zealand’s Need of Development.

AN OPENING FOR, BRITISH CAPITAL AND LABOUR.

VIEWS OF “MANCHESTER, GUARDJAN” CORRESPONDENT

New Zealand proper has all area slightly less than that of the whole United Kingdom if one etui still use that expression to-day—but largei than that of Great Britain, (writes “A New Zealand Correspondent” in the “Manchester Guardian” of a recent date). It is a mountainous country icseinbling Scotland ,or Wales, or Italy rather than England. It is a grazing country pre-eminently, and normally grows barely enough wheat to feel its own people. The host lands have long been occupied, and to buy them to-day costs probably more per acre than any other hut the very richest wirts of England. Settle then t in "c ent ea•has been in the high brok.m limit country, or oil freshly-drained swamps or sometimes on the poor pumice plains ol the great volcanic plateau of the North Island. There is no ‘‘free land” in New Zealand as there is still in Canada, though the Government is devising a homestead system for gum lands and pumice lands in the Auckland province, which have hitherto lain idle, as nobody would have the land as a gift. When it is realised that the New Zealand Government spent nearly £30,000,000 in settling about 90(H) returned soldiers on half a million acres of land and to-day in the slump of prices finds itself unable to get its money hack oil the amounts advanced for purchase of estates, and other items, the hopelessness of a purely agrarian policy of migration to New Zealand is quite manifest. On such a policy the Dominion can hardly absorb tlie present trilling increment of population through the arrival of about 10,000 picked immigrants a year. Unemployment, of course, is nothing like so serious here as in Britain, but the winter just commencing is nevertheless likely to lie one ol the hardest in that respect for many years.

THE SLUMP AFTER THE BOOM. The truth is that New Zealand is at the turning-point in her career. The years of the war and the two years that followed were boom years for the Dominion, and particularly for the farmers. The value of the exports almost entirely farm produce—wool, mutton, butter, cheese—in 1919 was £53,000,000 or more than three times the average of the year 190(1-14. In 1919-20 prices reached their peak. Since then they have dropped practically to pre-war rates - with land often bought and sold at figures based on boom prices. The surpluses left and tlie loans raised since the war. amount ing to something like £50,000,0(10 have all gone in repatriating tlie returned soldier—on whom about £lO,000,000 has been spent— and in continuing various public works at post-war rates for wages and materials. The Dominion, so far from being able to subsidise substantially a policy of imliiigraton. has been compelled to economise ill. all directions—to discharge large numbers of public servants and retrench, from 10 to 15 per cent, the salaries of the rest. This rules out, so far as this country is concerned, the suggestion that the dominions should pay their own immigration system. 'They will pay, hut only in the form of interest on loans advanced by the Motherland.

It is quite clear now that, the Massei Government’s elaborate and expensive scheme for the repatriation of members of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, though generous on the face of it, has hoeii largely a mistaken policy and hardly in the best interests ol the ex-soldiers themselves. Many hav; walked off their settlement farms because they cannot pay the interest on their mortgages, the Government has foreclosed oil some, and many more would get out if they could see any way of doing it without loss. The land was bought too dear, as if the Government thought the boom would last for ever. The present writer, among others, pointed out as early as 1919 the danger ahead and the folly of sinking public money into land should have been used for the general development of the country. If onehalf of tlie money spent on the returned soldier had been devoted to extending and improving tlie railways and roads, reclaiming swamps and wastes, afforestation, harbour improvements. establishment of new industry, exploiting mineral resources, there would have been room for all the returned soldiers who liked the outdoor life, but for many thousands of British inimigrn.iits as well. New Zealand would have been past the turning-point and on a fair way to the second stage of development already commenced in J Australia.

THE NATURAL WEALTH OF Till COUNTRY.

What tlien remains? Instead of financiug this development from her own savings, now gone in land speculation and over-importation of goods in 19:10. New Zealand will have once more to come in the London market for a big loan. This, for its size, is one of the richest countries in the world—rich in soil, rich in climate, rich in waterpower, rich in all manner of minerals from coal to gold, and well equipped with natural harbours. It responds to development like no other country in the world. Tt will grow any kind of cereal, fruit, vegetables, tree or animal from any temperate region of the earth. With a climate of infinite variety (from the extreme north to the extreme south, the soil only needs labour to work it to produce more astonishing results. From the apparently .barren claps of Moutore in the Nels<m province come the finest apples in Australasia; from the gum lands in the north come grapes, from which excellent wine can lie made. The swamps of tlio Waikato district, drained and treated ,are pasturing enormous numbers of dairy cattle, and the same process eouhl he applied to thousands of acres of other swamps elsewhere in New Zealand to-day. This is •ftnly one form of ' development. There is another form equally important. "Now'Zealand to-day is essentially a country producing primary materials for food and manufacture, and importing finished articles of manufacture The total imports in 1920 were valued at over C60.000,0<X) though that was a boom year. The unemployed in England are clearly mostly tradesmen engaged in manufacturing industries of all kinds. For little opening in New Zealand, as tbi* class of man there is at present there are few such industries here, and those relatively unimportant. The skilled tradesman from England has usually to follow another calling here,

often that of farm labour. Tills is thoroughly bail economy,

There is no country in the world better suited for manufacture than New Zealand. There is abundance of good coal, ample power in rivers and streams (lowing a rapid course from high mountains, it climate Of infinite variety, yet never too hot fiOr too cold, to stimulate industry, and ready access almost anywhere for export or distribution. Over in the Onakaka and Parapnra ranges of the Collingwood district of the South Island are deposits of limonite iroil ore. reckoned in the hundred millions of tons, htlril by mountains of limestone, and close to good coking coal. A single blast furnace established at Onakaka guarantees to turn out pig iron far more cheaply than it can lie imported. There are clays declared by a Canadian expert to l>e the most suitable for all kinds of pottery he has ever seen in his experience. There are a variety of the rarer minerals used in making modern alloy steels. Hardly a mineral can ho named that has not been discovered In New Zealand somewhere. There is a great bed of shale in Southland richer than tlie best Scotch shale. All these resources are so far practically untouched.

WHY NOT TRANSPLANT BRITISH INDUSTRIES?

Why then should not the great industries of Britain start branches out in New Zealand and supply this and adjacent markets from the Dominion’s own resources? There is no real dan- j gor to-day from labour troubles. Even the most militant labour organisations are back to-day ill the Arbitration Court, whose awards give at lenst a reasonable guarantee of tranquility. An opening up of these secondary in- ! dustries in New Zealand with British : capital and mostly British labour wouhl : be a far more satisfactory solution of i the problem than the dumping of poo- ! pie out here—artisans, factory opera- 1 tivos .engineers, and skilled specialists in one line or another—do take potluck in the (owbyre or the sheep station or with the pick and shovel. If England furnishes the money she should have a say in the spending of , it and the employment of her own i present unemployed. For the organi- j sat ion of Imperial migration, the system of transport over the sea, working so successfully during the war with j New Zealand and Australian Expeditionary Forces .might well be revived, j and great dispatching and receiving camps he established at either end. The immigrant at this end might well prove his worth for a while in a spell of development work on the building of railways, roads and other accessories of civilisation in a new country, j Then he could join his trade or indus- | try as it developed. These are the only lines on which Empire migration , on a large scale wouhl ever he sueecssful iii New Zealand.