TRADE TALK. Are We Hustling Intelligently?

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 239, 28 January 1905, Page 6

TRADE TALK. Are We Hustling Intelligently?

WOOL is up 1 Theiefore, the spirits of New Zealanders are "up ' too. Butter is fetching a good price Wherefore we smile. You haven t heard that the Admiralty is fitting all its warships with boileis made in New Zealand, 01 that locally-made goods are displacing everything else in the households of the countiy? No 1 But wool is up So is butter We read that lambs are scarce in the colony That Britain has eaten them for her breakfast, and that there is more money m dairying — so the sheep-men are buying cows We don t heai of any new industries starting outside of beef, or wool, or mutton or butter So £hat, m fact, we own that we ait- dependent oil these lines to a laige extent Trades unionism and labour legislation do not enter much into these industries, and it is laboui legislation and an eight-hovir day that have made us blossom like the rose and the most independent people on the face of the earth' Ameiica isn't pinning her faith to the lamb supply, or the butter supply, or the raw product business No sir ' She's hustling all she knows to get finished articles on to the markets of the woild * * * If America had kept to wool and wheat, and frozen beef she wouldn't want to listen to President Roosevelt's latest advice to send six United States' representatives into the world to- spy out the commercial methods of other peoples, and so go back home knowing where to get the wedge m for another market America wants to stimulate her trade That is to say she wants the earth. American methods are not always beyond reproach The other day some Yankee boodlers fired tens of thousands of dollars' worth of standing cotton to keep up the price of the market * * * Still, as a sample of Yankee hustle, Roosevelt s suggestion is thought-compelling We m New Zealand hustle too, but mostly to get more wages for less work We don't start new industries, mainly because people with cash dont know how the laboui cat is going to jump next time When the papeis say there is prosperity, they usually mean that the tradesmen, who have nothing whatever to do with staple industries are getting big wages, and that the man who pays them is hitching up his prices a few points to keep on the right aide of the ledger * » • We are prosperous because we can pay our way and "sufficient unto the day," etc Look at the value of

the lavd 1 Rathci, think of the value the valueis put on it for the pui poses of the unimproved value rating It may bo this that makes us prospeious, but with enormous values on land, that could not be realised, we should be less wealthy than with a few million bales of wool in London that could • * • We are hoping that New Zealand will one day be a densely-populated country, so that we shall have to quit depending entirely on raw pioducts, and go in for manufactures We ought to be thinking more about it Likewise, should we tiy to forg-et that the demands of laboui — w Inch are the demands of but an inconsiderable pioportion of the people of this country — are less important than the needs of the whole people for new markets for new things Small as we are. we do very well, and we are very well off, but we don't owe it to the man who builds our houses or shoes our horses We owe it to Nature and the man who asks for very little outside of good seasons and fat crops When Nature is unkind whither shall we turn ? To the lar°e values of the land *