MORE PRODUCTION.

Hokitika Guardian, 6 March 1926, Page 3

MORE PRODUCTION.

HOW SCIENCE CAN HELP. BEST COUNTER TO LOWER PRICES. WELLINGTON. March 1. Sir Frank Heath, in an address to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce ln.*t night, said that lie ventured to say that the Dominion had lmr.l times ahead, and that there was it general tendency lor prices to fail. “Now.” he said, “is the time to get on with the means of better production through scientific research. because if you get more production it is the host possible counter to lower prices. The cost. 1 assure you. is quite small when compared with the benefits. “We are entering on a p.-riod of greater stability and a more permanent hope of peace. 1 refer to peace in violent combat between nations. The Treaty of Locarno is the first step in that diretion. lop just in Hie same proportion as you got stability in the external relations of the Powers, so will you intensify competition between the Rowers in the arts of peace, and the nation that lags behind in using its brain* will a!*o lag behind in reaping the Jioii*. No nation, howover great, cm hupo to he .self-suffic-ing. “The growing -•( wheat and dairying are very important. It y-mr primary industries fall into an unsalisI'actury condition your credit ts ill fall. With your tailing credit your .secondary industries will (ollao.se. I don’t think that a* much work lias been done in New Zealand with regard to cultivation as has Lean done in (Ountries that find it more difficult to grow wheat.

“Again you cami.it afford io Tag behind in competition with those other count l ie*. Australia has great natural disadvantages in the production of wheat. Nevertheless Victoria, ill the last ten year*, ha* increased her

production by six bushel* to the acre. In this country the tendency is for wheat certainly not to i is• •. and in some parts of the country to fall. It is largely heeitn.se you are not studying wheat trading so milch a* cultivation. You have keen content to

grow wheat, but you must remember that your climate i* not the same as ours. Vo nr soils are different. Canada is a country with enormous disad-

vantages as a u heat-growing count ry. I-'or six month* of the year not only is the fa niter idle but the shops shut, ((own and there is no trade carried on. Your ease i* a much more favourable one than that, but what has Canada done by wheat product ion ? They h.nve produced wheat ,iu*f recently which will ripen in ninety days from the time it is put into the soil. What is the elfeet of that ! It, means that the area, in which you can grow wheat in Canada ha* b.-rn iiiiU'ea*ed by a territory 1090 mile* long and .100 miles wide. Think what, that means to Canada is a great. wheat-producing part of the Empire. “Yon have in New Zealand bare lands in v.!ih h wheal i* la'ing grown which will produce not a* in Canada, an average of twenty bushel* lnit seventy bi!*hcls i I the acre. That, of course, is not your average, but it is ju*t a* possible by scionilic methods Io .■ilnuis! double your pr. >d ml inn. It means, however, long, slow and honest work.

••Lot me give voo a word of warning. New Zealand i* known for its inventive genius. Now research work i* a quite different thing. The first basis is careful, honest, constructive Work. I v.oiild add to that a much higher gift, dilliciili to describe, but very similar in kind to the power of the painter or noveli*l. a kind of creative imagination, u kind of power of grouping thing* together, and observing'thing* which have not been not iced before. Now. that i* a slow lupines*. Research work (an v.t-ver promi*" you re*uli* in a "iveit lime, hut ultimately it w;T. Research i- not something winch ecu lie doin' by turning oil soon thing lii.e a tap. To the course of attacking a definite problem. however, it sometimes happens that other discoveries quite unfnrseeti. which may he of the utmost value are made. You must have Hie com-

billed efforts of Hie scientist. economist and .statistician.”