THE INDUSTRIAL TREE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 786, 5 October 1929, Page 7

THE INDUSTRIAL TREE

OUR NATIONAL LIFE DEPENDS ON ITS BEARING PLENTIFULLY The state of a country can always be judged by the condition of its industries. Where industries are flourishing, the people are wealthy and prosperous: but where industry languishes, we find poverty, depression, and unemployment. Industrial fruitfulness in New Zealand has been shrivelled by lack of shelter, while young, against flooding by outside goods, and by want of support from within when New Zealanders deliberately prefer the fruit of foreign workers’ industry to the products of our own makers of goods. If the state of New Zealand todav

| is to be judged by its industrial condition. we are forced to acknowledge ! that ail is not well in our island homo Industrial production has flagged, and ; is suffering from “sleeping sickness.” j and until the people wake up and rea- | lise that we are dropping behind in j our productiveness, the return of lastj big prosperity will remain as far off as ever. We are soon to witness the deplorable sight of skilled artisans and trained workers being sent from the towns to the country to engage in road-making, tree-planting, and j other unskilled occupations in order ■ to provide them and their dependants ; with the means to exist. INDUSTRIAL INDEPENDENCE j We are still told by theorists that, < on account of “seeming cheapness.” it is better to let other nations do for t us what we can. should, and must ultii mat-sly do for ourselves. Many of our mentors with obsolete ideas continue to impress on us the old legal maxim from Latin primers that “What a man does through someone else he does by himself.” That idea has made tha middleman and the non-producer prosperous, while our industrialists struggle to free themselves from the | bonds of prejudice and find a home ! market for their goods. Young New Zealand must learn to put its back and its brain, and not its little finger, to developing New Zealand to the utmost. At the end of the present term i thousands of boys and girls will be ; leaving school and college. For them our tree of industry offers no shelter j while we rely on other nations to ' create for us what we could fashion for ourselves. If our industries were flourishing, there would be openings ! for all, from the machine-feeder to the brain worker in the office and scientific research branches. As industry develops, every new- plant established creates a score of accessory developments. “Large oaks from little acorns grow,” and one acorn dropped on fertile soil is the foundation of a flourishing oak forest. Land settlement, scientific agriculture, and afforestation are essential; but to produce the fullest value, the processes of manufacture are equally important in converting our raw materials into the finished articles. The youthful products of our £4,000,000-a-year educational system are far more likely to find a fruitful return for their training at school, college, and technical institution in the field of industry than in the professional or commercial serVISION IN INDUSTRY We aro an island people; deep oceans and not border signposts or mountain peaks are our frontiers. Our insularity and isolation is, paradoxically, at once a protection and a peril. It is a protection against the danger of attacks from without, but it is a peril when we have to rely on marI kets at the Antipodes in which to exchange our crude products of foodstuffs and raw- materials for the manufactured goods we need. Our natural instincts as a purely British com munity are all toward self-reliance and self-dependence; but we must rouse ourselves from that sleeping sickness which has attacked our industries, or we will find ourselves droppipng back to a third-rate country. New Zealand today is the greatest importing country in the world, and shows no signs of growing out of its nursling state. It should be written large on our shops and warehouses — IF THE PEOPLE WILL NOT PRODUCE. NEITHER SHALL THEY EAT. Too many are living on the bread of charity, and relief works will produce no tangible wealth. When the tree of industry flourishes and bears fruit in abundance, everyone shares in the harvest. When it wilts and sickens, everyone suffers. The man in the street and the woman in the home must learn the first lesj son that, our industries can only thrive I and develop to the same extent as they are supported by our own people. BUY THE PRODUCTS OF NEW ZEALAND WORKERS. AND WATCH NEW ZEALAND GROW PROSPEROUS!