SECONDARY INDUSTRIES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 657, 8 May 1929, Page 8

SECONDARY INDUSTRIES

ALTHOUGH nearly 200 firms are represented on the membership lists of the Auckland Manufacturers’ Association, a good many people still profess surprise when they discover that some article which has taken their fancy is New Zealand-made. Auckland is the largest manufacturing centre in New Zealand, the varied character of its industrial output indicating not only a favourable distributing location, but also the enterprise and originality manufacturers have brought to bear upon their task. Yet, even here the wheels of industry move in the face of prejudice. The barriers of strange sentiment have not yet been razed, and the inexorable expansion goes on to the accompaniment of that political and domestic inertia which can be worse than the mqst violent opposition. How far a moderately developed industrial system can confer general economic benefits has been demonstrated in the recent years of depression. But for the steady engagements offered in factory and foundry the severity of unemployment would have been more pronounced than ever. Periodic waves of unemployment are inseparable from abject dependence on perishable produce sold in distant markets. That lesson has been hammered into New Zealanders —farmers, city workers, and all time and again since the ’seventies; and if it has not been absorbed by now, it never will be. But there is another lesson to absorb; the lesson learned particularly by Australia and Canada, that the unfortunate results of dependence on primary produce may be mitigated by the development of secondary industries, so that, even in the had years when little money is coming in, the country is not sending out enormous sums for essential commodities such as foodstuffs, footwear and clothes. Tariff considerations naturally interest the manufacturers and will doubtless form one of the burning topics for discussion at the annual meeting on May 16. In a country like New Zealand, where a large body of farmers has to be considered, tariff adjustments must be carefully handled. But if any farmer can justify opposition to a tariff on, say, jam made with black labour a few thousand miles away, he deserves credit for more than ordinary ingenuity. Just as important as tariffs and bounties is the simple question of a fair trial for the New Zealand-made product. The New Zealand manufacturer is the first to admit that he has often something to learn—that in points of style and finish, though certainly not in quality of workmanship, his overseas competitor occasionally leads him. But too often the people will not help him to learn. From motives of pure snobbery—that most miserable of all sentiments —the New Zealand article is rejected. This form of showing disfavour is a declining tendency, and one of these days it will become completely unfashionable. But in the meantime the New Zealand manufacturer has to fight it by every means in his power, _