FUTURE OF N.Z.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 September 1930, Page 6

FUTURE OF N.Z.

•GOVERNOR’S CALL. • j * FOR. CONFIDENT RURAL ENTERPRISE. (By Telegraph—Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Sept. 16. New Zealand’s economic welfare was dealt .with by His Excellency the Gov-ernor-General when spealving on the subject of ‘‘Town .and Country” at a Rotary Club luncheon. ‘‘l am a convinced, believer,in .Rotary,” said His Excellency. “It promotes social intercourse amongst busy men, takes them for once outside their occupa-. tion watertight compartments, and by ;broadening their outlook adds materially to their happiness, and value to the body politic. The subject of my address is prompted by the New Zealand Shopping Week, so prudently organised at Wellington. In the present state of the country’s finances, etery product patriot should consider when he spends a shilling into whose hands that shilling will ultimately pass,” he said. “If into a local factory, which is normally affording good employment to his fellow or, failing that, into a factory in any country like Great Britain, to which New Zealand sells her; own primary products, at least a pen>ny of that shilling,; perhaps a good deal more, will come back to the spender one way or another. No country’s economic welfare, contentment, and happiness depends in these days solely upon its own domestic activities, but at least we can all add to the country’s security and our own prosperity and comfort by keeping our money circulating in the family,” primarily in the home circle of New Zealand itself so far as one’s brother New Zealanders can supply one’s wants’ and so far as they cannot do so, then in the families of Mother Britain and the Imperial cousins. If every 'New Zealander doggedly made this his trade objective, he would be surprised at the rapidity with which the clouds of depression now • obscuring the sun of industry and domestic' comfort would pass away. Prudent Government finance is not the only road to national prosperity. Self help is at least as important, coupled .with a clear vision and a sense, of relative values. Regarding industrial activities, the greatest perils facing this Dominion in future are, in the first place too great a dependence upon the Government to undertake tasks which are more appropriate for individual enterprise, and for the ' employment of individual capital, and, in the second place, the drift of population from the countryside into the towns. The former threatens to kill New Zealand’s •personal initiative and- sound industrial development, and the latter to kill New Zealand herself. . It. is up to the townsman to remember that his ultimate .economic salvation lies not on his own urban doorstep, but in (he fair green countryside where New Zealand’s butter, cheese, wool, meat, fruit, honey, flax and timber are being produced; and up in the backblocks where the conditions are hard and life is strenuous, but where.the.vital spark of < the sturdy, resourceful pioneer, who laid the foundations of her economic .structure barely one hundred years ago,, is still determined and resourceful. There are pessimists abroad to-day, even in this land of sunshine, smiles and human efficiency. The pessimist who most needs watching and rebutting ;is lie who scents national bankruptcy in world over-production of land products. Constituted as she is iclimatically, and humanly, if, and when, there is world, over-production of land output, she should be, and assuredly will be, one of the very last countries to go to the wall. Pessimism is said .to be the handmaid of national decline. Pessimism warps energy and wrecks initiative. Confident anticipation is indeed the lifeblood of all industrial undertakings, but to none is it more. essential than to those of the countryside, as there is an inevitable “lag” in the financial recoupment of capital and labour expended in i. agricultural enterprises. This sense of a future security can best be gratified by a consciousness of the rapid Improvement which modern science, intelligently applied, is effecting in farm practice/’