OVER PRODUCTION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4532, 18 November 1930, Page 3

OVER PRODUCTION.

“•Since the war primary production has been responsive to tbe stimulus of successful research, improved methods, and the famine prides that ruled fog a short time. The result lias been supplies in excess of demand, because the readjustment of the process by which raw material is converted into the form in which it ’is available for cosumption has not gone hand in hand with it,” says the Times Trade Supplement. “Under modern conditions the item of cost of material plays only a relatively small part in .the fixation of the price of finished articles, while other factors, such as transport charges, wages, factory upkeep, and distribution costs, have been strongly resistant to change, and higher taxation has tended to increase the prices of the final products of industry. The net results is a want of relativity between the prices of iraw materials and those of finished articles which curtails consumption, or, in other words, creates trade depression. The tendency of the highly complex modern system to press with undue hardship on the primary producer is a very serious matter. . .

Organised labour lias secured terms and conditions that seem to ensure its welfare, but if, as a result, the cost of finished goods is mil of proportion to the primary producer’s capacity to purchase, stagnation of trade is inevitable and in the long run all classes suffer; but few people recognise that ibe logical outcome of a lopsided position of this kind is to depress the conditions of life for all and to create a large permanent body

, men and women in ail sections whose labour- will be redundant until a more equitable arrangement increases tbe flow and exchange of commodities.”