CORRESPONDENCE

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3675, 9 August 1927, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE

(To The Editor). Sir, —I have read with interest your report of the suggestion of the chief hemp grader (Mr Petrie) at Auckland. Now, as one who is interested in the industry, I think he touched the fringe of the question. Take it this way, as applies to the Manawatu district: For a period of something like sixty years milling has been carried on, and during the greater part of that time, the source of production has been practically neglected. Take that large area of flaxland, the Moutoa swamp. It has been cut for oper half a century but what has been done to maintain supplies for the future? Next to nothing. If during the off season the idle labour caused through closing the mills had been utilised, and plantng carried on, what area of flax would there now be to draw the raw material from? To cut each year, from the rapidly deteriorating present supplies, without doing a single act to aid the industry, calls forth strong condemnation. We have the Government planting forests for the future to ensure timber supplies yet up till recently and then only in isolated eases, have swamp owners and mill owners wakened up to the ■ fact that it is time to be up and doing. As far as the industry was concerned, when it practically held • the world’s market, quantity, not quality, was the order, and now that the market is flooded with foreign fibres to the detriment of the New Zealand article, the neglect and mistakes of the past policy are now a nightmare to the miller such that the general public may have to bear the burden of re-establishing the industry. To my way of thinking, it should be compulsory for the swamp owner at each off season to carry out a re-planting policy, so that instead of looking to the fast dwindling old bushes, a fresh supply should always be available. Failing the owner doing so, the areas should be confiscated and become the property of the people, as a National asset. Coming nearer to the production of the finished article, a vast amount of fault can be found there that is entirely the millers.’ The happy-go-lucky policy of the past is recoiling upon them to-day. What have they done towards embodying new ideas as to the improvement of machinery for turning out a better article beyond a few isolated experiments? Practically nothing. It has often struck me that unless an idea developed from the brain of the mill-owner, with all due respect to him, he seems obseessed with the idea that no one else could think out improvements. I know of men directly using the present machinery who have had, and some have at present, got ideas but the reason that they have not the facilities and finance, nor the necessary encouragement from the miller and rather than be done out of the benefits that may have accrued by perfecting their ideas, they have been content to put them aside. To try to unload < the result of their past policy on to the backs of the public now is, to say the least, unjustified now that foreign competition has become so strong. While quantity has been the past policy, the foreign competitor has been perfecting his machinery and also his methods of producing the raw article which accounts for his hold on the market to-day. To put all the blame down to labour cost as a handicap is erroneous because, to my mind, the cost has been largely through the hap-hazard method, want of organisation, and large cost of administration at the head of affairs for while cutting wages may at present increase the profit, it certainly will not improve the finished article. If the millers have the future of the industry at heart, then they should be the ones to give encouragement and help to /‘anyone who has an idea for the improvement of the present methods of milling, not to meet them with a hostile feeling, as it is the miller who also is going to benefit as well as to give the person from whom the ideji originated the benefit of his brain work. If there has to be a school of instruction then it should also be a place where trials would be given to any improvements and the millers be looked to for a fair proportion towards the general expenses of such institution. For the present state of the industry it is a simpler matter to place the blame. —Yours, etc., / , (FIBRE—Cr’