PRODUCTION.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 145, 12 August 1926, Page 4

PRODUCTION.

ALTHOUGH the precept of the Bulletin on production issued by the Economics Department of Canterbury College in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce is one with which the public is now" familiar, one must welcome the Bulletin for two reasons —first, for the statistical basis of its lesson, and, second, for the urgency with which it asks the public to believe that unless primary production increase the Dominion will have an unhappy time (writes the Christchurch Press). It would be an excellent thing if the Economics Department would follow up this Bulletin with another dealing in a general and theoretical way with the fact that our borrowing is an anticipation of future production, was once so understood, but is now becoming perilously like borrowing without conscious thought of the future. In the meantime it is refreshing to have the old incontrovertible truth restated, that “ the one certain method of securing greater wealth, whether for an individual, a section, or a whole community, is by increasing the shares contributed to the common stream [of goods and services] from which all consumption must be derived.” In recent years the Dominion has enjoyed a large measure of comfort mainly through the high prices the world has paid us for our exports of primary produce, but the price level is becoming stabilised at something rather below" the pleasant level of recent years. Since our debt is growing—requiring the production of more exportable commodities to pay the growing interest bill—and our population is also growing and therefore increasingly in need of consumable wealth (and very little inclined to be content with a lower level of consumption), it is plain that the volume of production must be increased and that the service given by all who work must be nearer a twenty-shilling-in-the-pound service than it is at present. Last March, repeating what had long become clear to most people who had given attention to the statistics of production, we were urging that “ the stimulation of primary production, upon which the comfort of everyone depends in the last resort, is the most important task ahead of the country and of the Government.” This is again urged in the Bulletin

under notice, but its authors issue a more general warning: “To increase production must be our chief aim, and it would be wise also to consider every policy and every current practice primarily in the light of its effect on production.” They show" that the volume of our exports of primary products has just kept pace with the growth of population between the years 1914 and 1925, and since the population, man for man, consumes more than in 1914, this mere equivalency is not enough. Now, have our politicians been paying real attention to the obvious needs of the country ? Nobody can say they have. They have been strengthening and tightening and increasing the fetter placed by the State upon private enterprise; they have been weakening our primary producers’ capacity to face the competition of the world by increasing their costs in the interests of secondary industries; they have, been giving up their energy to disputes over questions of minor importance. Against the results of years of apathy and error, flourishing in a sunshine of high prices which has lessened the urge to stark effort, the preachers of sound economic doctrine have been preaching in vain. Perhaps the preaching will remain vain until hard times will leave the preachers with the poor consolation of being able to say “ I told you so.” We hope not; indeed, we believe that these Bulletins cannot but have some effect, and if one may make a suggestion to the Chamber of Commerce, we would suggest that it should use its utmost. endeavours to keep the teaching of these Bulletins before the public of the whole : Dominion.