NEWS AND NOTES.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 July 1927, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

What New Zealand needs is the good-will of its customers if it is to escape a repetition of (lie disastrous losses that ensued on the grasping policy of price fixation. The Australian Dairy Board and the New Zealand Aleat Board provide the pattern that New Zealand dairy farmers should follow in their marketing arrangements. It may please their vanity to he told that they were right, and everybody else was wrong, hut it will not make for the prosperity of New Zealand.—Christchurch “Star."

The application of machinery to farm pursuits is the chief reason why primary production has increased instead of decreasing with the reduced number of those engaged in it. But it would surely he better for the country and better for the town also if those thereby displaced were not to completely break their direct association with the land and its pursuits. as must he the ease when they migrate to town, r l hat there aie elements of unhoalthincss in this transfer is suggested hv the formation of a Band Settlement and Development League in Auckland, the town which more than any other has been attracting population to itself, until now it is virtually admitting a stato of congestion.— Dunedin St.u .

New Zealand should ever keep in the fore front of its national policy tlio fact that the destiny of this fair country reposes in the- marketing o! the products of the farms, but every encouragement must 1)0 given to the secondary industries of the Dominion. The merest turn of the wheel of fortune, ill returning more satisfactory prices for the country’s primary products, would ensure a return of widespread prosperity: nevertheless the outlook is full of promise, since the falling hank rate in the Homeland should vitalise industrial and commercial activities, and create a very much stronger consumptive demand for our primary products at prices which will ensure the return of reasonable prosperity.—Tim ain "Hera Id.”

The distrust of the workers for piecework is evinced in the. argument that, payment l.y results induces the worker to speed up to the detriment of his own health and at the risk of accident, hut in order to accept this argument ono miht. also assume that the standard of intelligence of the worker is low. Payment by results should lead to greater contentment and harmony within industry, and it would undoubtedly soon prove its popularity with the skilled tradesman, who need not longer feel that his earning-power was limited to the capacity and worth of the least capable man in his calling, as is so frequently tin' ease under the. trade union award system. —ll a wera- “Star.' ’

Undue economy in education is a curious method of making good the unforunato wastage if war. No one in his senses would advocate unnecessary or prodigal expenditure, but- when the inevitable reply to all requests lor improvements is the stereotyped “quesion of finance,” here is need to decide whether education is not a greater im_ portaneo than somo of the objects on which money is being expended by the Stale. Any refusal to meet the just demands of education, and which ignores the effect on the future wellbeing of the nation, will bring disastrous results, for from a purely eeonomoe standpoint the most important part of the capital of a country consists of human beings. Expenditure on their moral, physical and intellectual advancement is the most remunerative of all investments. —“ Lyttelton Times."