From Labour’s Viewpoint.

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 50, 21 May 1927, Page 14

From Labour’s Viewpoint.

Our Timber Industry

Written for THE SUN, By H. E. Holland, M.P.

This is the ninth article of a weekly series contributed by the Leader of the Oppositibn, political head of the New Zealand Labour Party. It is as fair to Mr. Holland as it is to THE SUN to state that his pithy opinions are entirely his own and represent only the policy of the Labour Party; also, that, in their publication, the right of criticism is not surrendered.

OUR system of timber importations is working out its results disastrously for the community. In every timber district of New Zealand to-day many mills are closing down, while others are discharging up to 50 per cent, of their employees and even then are working only part time. Right throughout the milling areas of the North Island, north and south on the West Coast of the South Island, and everywhere in the Southland and Catlins River district the story is the same. The timber workers are being sent to join the unemployed, or they are being cut down to half-time, compulsory idleness of many hundreds of working men means a great deal more than the acute hardships inflicted upon the dis-employed men and their families. These are the greatest sufferers; but the whole community suffers as well, directly and indirectly. Coincidently with the heavy decrease in the output of New Zealand timbers, the importations continue to come in. New Zealand money flows to America and elsewhere to pay for the imported material, but America makes no reciprocal movement in our direction. It we send our butter there (even if we send it, as we often do, packed in boxes made out of American timber which our rebate system has made duty free), it will have to pay a duty of sixpence a lb. before it can reach the American market. To the Labour Party it has always appeared to be wholly uneconomic and foolish to go thousands of miles across the seas to procure a commodity which we ourselves can produce in abundance. We have consistently held that New Zealand coal should be used for New Zealand purposes, and we hold similarly with respect to New Zealand timber. Like coal, timber is an industry that is natural to the country, and this being so it should not be permitted to be ruined by the competitive or dumping methods of America or any other country. AMERICAN CEDAR Certain classes of cedar, Oregon pine (Douglas fir), American hemlock, and Japanese oak make the heaviest displacements of New Zealand timbers. Up to 1922, cedar came into the Dominion in very small quantities; in the year named the importations amounted to 20,000 superficial feet only, and this was used almost solely in furniture making. Then cedar was placed on the free list and the American importers began to flood the New Zealand market with a class of cedar different from that which had come in hitherto, and which was now used in house building to the detriment of our local timbers. To what extent this happened may be gathered from the statistics. In 1925 the importations totalled 6,507,882 feet, the whole of which came from the United States and Canada—3,638,343 feet from the former country and 2,869,539 feet from the latter. OREGON AND HEMLOCK We all recognise that in any circumstances there must be importations of Oregon pine, just as there must be importations of hardwoods. But the increase in the quantity of Oregon imported in the five-year period 1920-1925 furnishes plenty of food for thought. In 1920 the Oregon pine imported into this country totalled 2,801,354 feet, and most of it came from the United States. In 1925 the imports had risen to 15,781,615 feet—about 8,500,000 feet from the United States and some 7,250.000 feet from Canada. I do not think it is exaggerating the position to say that we could dispense with quite four-fifths of this imported pine and substitute New Zealand timbers for it—and I am sure that it would be to our advantage to do so.

American hemlock, like cedar, has only recently commenced to invade the New Zealand market. In 1920 it was not included in our list of timber imports, but in 1923 more than 500,000 feet came in the form of imports from Canada, while the quantity that came in during 1925 exceeded 1,000,000 feet. It competes with and displaces secondgrade white pine on the local market.

CONCERNING JAPANESE OAK Importations of Japanese oak did not reach us in any quantities until 1923 In that year 1,378,000 feet came in. In the same year the United States sent us nearly 187,000 feet of American o?xk When American cedar commenced to displace New Zealand rimu and other local timbers in house building, Japanese oak in its turn began to supersede both New Zealand timbers and American cedar in furniture naking. The increase in oak imports became very substantial, and in 1924 the total stood at well over 2,000,000 feet, of which quantity nearly 1,000,000 feet came from Japan and over 400,000 feet from the United States, and 186,000 feet from Canada. In 1925 the imports worked out at 2,683,000 feet, nearly 2,350,000 feet coming from Japan and about 232,000 from the United States. The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Austria, France, Jugoslavia and Rumania accounted for the balance, in fractional quantities. Most of the imported Japanese oak is made up into furniture, which is often placed on the market as “oak furniture,” and many unsuspecting folk who purchase it imagine they are getting English oak. But, since the 1925 imports of English oak amounted to only 16,500 feet, it will be seen that it does not enter into our furniture making to any serious extent.

There is an impression abroad that oak withstands the borer; but this is certainly not true of Japanese oak. I have seen specimens of Japanese oak which were borer-riddled. Notwithstanding that New Zealand rimu is

quite as durable as Japanese oak and at least 20 per cent, less costly, it is asserted that in certain manufacturing centres of the Dominion, including Christchurch, for every hundred feet of rimu used in the manufacture of furniture two hundred feet of Japanese oak is used. INCREASE IN IMPORTATIONS Whether the timber imports be measured in superficial feet or in values, the increase will work out enormously to the disadvantage of the New Zealand timber industry. In 1914 the value of imported timber was little more than £400,000; in 1921 it had risen to £813,000; in 1925 ih had gone up to £1,115,000. Thus in 1925, measured in value, the timber imports were nearly three times what they were in 1914. In the matter of the soft woods that compete with New Zealand timber, the increase of imports amounted to 262 per cent, in a two-years’ period, 1923-25. The soft wood importations are now more than 40,000,000 feet a year, which represents the output of about 40 ordinary mills, or, to put it another way, the whole annual output of the Southland mills. LOW WAGES IN AMERICA In some cases the wages of the American timber workers are higher in their money expression than is the case in New Zealand. Generally speaking, I do not think they are higher in their purchasing power—which, after all, is the true test. But it has to be remembered that large numbers of lowly-paid Asiatics are employed in American timber production, and because of this the wages of many of the timber workers of America, especially on the Pacific Slope, are much lower than those of New Zealand. In British Columbia mills last year, it is stated, 20.46 per cent. of the employees were Asiatics —Chinese, Japanese and Hindus—whose wages ranged from Is Oid to Is sid an hour. In his book, “The Goose Step,” Upton Sinclair declares that in 1923 the big lumber companies cut wages; while on an investment of three millions they paid dividends of seven millions. At Port Angeles, he says, they brought in shiploads of Japanese labour in defiance of the law; the lumber-jacks and blan-ket-stiffs worked in hourly peril of life and limb, they slept in filthy bunks and ate rotten food, and if they attempted to combine and better their conditions their organisations were destroyed and their meeting halls sacked; if they appealed to the authorities they were laughed at, if they appealed to the public their voices were unheard. It is against timber produced under these conditions that the timber of New Zealand is expected to compete; and, since the bulk of the timber brought from the Pacific Slope is sold in New Zealand below cost of production, the New Zealand article has to meet the double handicap of cheap wages and dumping processes. HANDICAPPED BY RAILWAY FREIGHTS

New Zealand timber is further handicapped by the manner in which, during recent years, the Reform administration has loaded up the railway freights against the industry. This has been done to such an extent that cargoes of timber can now be brought from America and even from Sweden at lower freight rates than our railways charge for carrying timber from Ohakune to Wanganui or Wellington. Since 1918 the railway freight charges for New Zealand timber have been increased by 40 per cent., and during last session of Parliament it was pointed out that this meant that the freight from Ohakune to Wellington on a five-roomed house had been increased by £l3 2s 6d. On the other hand, the case of the barque Guy C. Goss—which may still be remembered by SUN readers —illustrated how the cheap freight rates from the United States were still further reduced, almost to the point of disappearance, by the American lumber people. WHAT LABOUR PROPOSES The Labour Party does not commit itself to the advocacy of a revenueproducing tariff. We are against tariffs which produce revenue. If a tariff results in bringing in revenue it means that it does not protect. We lay it down as a foundation principle that the only timber which should be imported is that which we cannot produce here; that we should concentrate our productive energies on the industries that are natural to the country, sending to other countries the commodities of which we have a surplus and which they need and receiving from them the things we need and cannot produce, and of which they have a surplus. I have often stated that the Labour Party is neither fanatical free trade nor protectionist in the sense i which those terms arc understood by the free-traders and protectionists. The party will meet each set of circumstances as it arises. If Labour were the governing party, we should proceed to base our legislation on a recognition of the fact that it is not necessary to import timbers which are abundantly available here. State sawmills and timber yards would be established—the timber yards for the effective and economical distribution of the product of the mills, for most people know that a factor in the present price of timber is the privately owned timber yards. But we are not in power, and in the meantime we are only in a position to endeavour to influence the present Government in the direction of safeguarding the industry and the workers in it. And so we seek to secure the appointment of a Commission to make the fullest possible inquiry into the position and working of the timber industry from the standing bush to the consumer, the Commission to includo the representatives of the timber workers, farmers, industrial organisations, etc. Pending the report of such a Commission we will support an adequate tariff or a subsidy which will save the industry from competition and dumping from outside, while at the same time we will demand safeguards against monopoly prices and exploitation from within.