“End in Disaster’’

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 442, 25 August 1928, Page 7

“End in Disaster’’

Mr. Bruce on Marketing, By Governments WARNING TO AUSTRALIANS "Governments can render a measure of assistance, but the real basis must come from the producers themselves. Do not let Governments come in and run your marketing for you. I say it deliberately that that can only end in disaster.” This warning was uttered by the Prime Minister (Mr. Bruce), amid great cheering, at the luncheon at tended by delegates to tbe Farmers' and Settlers’ Conference at Sydney. The Prime Minister said that the prosperity of the industries of Australia, primary and secondary, was dependant upon the export trade. Primary production supplied practically the whole of that trade; about GO per cent, being provided by the phstoral industry. Gradually, Into the minds of the city dwellers, and. indeed, of the whole of the people of Australia, the profound truth was sinking that unless they had prosperous primary industries there was no hope for general prosperity. The problem, with which they were now faced —a world-wide problem—was to bring the living standard of the worker on the land up to of equality with the industrial worker in the city. This would only be accomplished by the application of science to industry. Governments could render invaluable aid in this direction. “The form that assistance is to take,” Mr. Bruce continued, "is not by making people entirely deficient of self-reliance, by spoon-feeding them. There has been too great a tendency in Australia for people faced with a difficult problem to appeal to Governments to get them out of it. We have to get a spirit of self-reliance, a determination to overcome difficulties, into the minds of the people, and urge them to recognise that there is no difficulty in this country that we cannot overcome.” (Hear, hear.) Mr. Bruce added a warning to the delegates not to let the consumers ! control the pools, which, he contended, should be run by the producers themselves. "For good or ill,’ he added, "you are in the hands of the politicians, and you cannot get ! ont of it. You must remember that ; the mind of the politician will tend toward the side of the big battalions —the consumers.” (Laughter and applause.)