Industrial Prosperity

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 2, 24 March 1927, Page 9 (Supplement)

Industrial Prosperity

JNDUSTRIAL prosperity is not, like Aiaddin’s

palace, something that grows up over night, but the natural outcome of years of hard work, and the careful planning of the best business brains of the community. What can be accomplished even in a‘ comparatively short space of time has been well illustrated in Auckland Province.

Thirty years ago, for example, mere were 650 factories in the province, which turned out goods valued at something over £2,000,000 in round figures. In 1925 (the latest statistics available) the number ot manufacturing establishments had more than doubled, while the production had grown to the stupendous total of over £28,000,000. The number of workmen employed was within a. thousand of the mimber employed in the whole of the Dominion in 1895, and their wages bill totalled over £5,000,000.

Another fact worthy of note is that the amount earned annually by factory workers of the province is now more than two and a-half times what it was for the whole of New Zealand in the middle ’nineties. Further, the output value of our manufactures has grown until it is treble the Dominion figure of thirty years ago.

A fact that contributes largely to the prosperity of the province and helps also to swell the total number of manufacturing concerns is the number of small factories employing only a few men. that are to be found throughout the province. In these, as well as in the bigger establishments, business is slowly but surely forging ahead, and it would be difficult to forecast the development that will take place during the next ten years or so. It Is Interesting to notice in the process of investigating, that industrialists themselves are impressed by the American system of industrial grouping, which in a large measure eliminates over-lapping, and does away with a certain amount of extravagant competition, as well as cutting out excessive over-head charges, syhich tentf to cripple any manufacturing business.

So far, the progress made covers a period in which eleptric power has not been fully utilised. By next year, when the supply of power from Arapuni will be made available throughout the province, manufacturing activities should go ahead by leaps and bounds.

A further stimulus to local production has been given by the encouragement of local consumers to "Buy New Zealand-Made Coods.” At the.present time local industry is supporting quite a large proportion of the population, both of the city and province, and, as the movement gathers way, the demand for the locally produced article should Increase tremendously. Somewhere in the vicinity of 130 different industries are carried on at the present time < throughout the province, and every year the diversity of its manufactures is increasing. The range covers practically every imaginable article for everyday use or consumption. The extent and variety of Auckland manufactures may be appreciated to some extent when it is realised that one-third of the Dominion’s total output comes from Auckland. Quality as well as quantity is watched with the strictest care, and the result cannot be other than an ever-increasing demand for our goods both at home and abroad.