THE UNEMPLOYED EVIL

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 880, 25 January 1930, Page 7

THE UNEMPLOYED EVIL

A PERMANENT REMEDY DO OUR WORK HERE The final "News Bulletin” for 1929, issued by our Industries and Commerce Department last month, shows that New Zealand ■n'.ports more goods from abroad p_. capita than any other country in the world. The National Committee inquiring into unemployment here is now drafting its final report, and is urging the practice of "practical patriotism" by buying New Zealand-made goods as the remedy for unemployment. To many who give only a casual glance at the matter, the fact that Xew Zealand's external trade Per capita is the highest in the world, and four times as great as that of the United States or South Africa; and that we import more goods, a head, than any other couutry, are matters for congratulation. In fact, our owu Department of Industries and Commerce points with pride to the “enviable” position in the importation of manufactured goods which New Zealand occupies at the top of the world's list; but, strangely enough, accounts for this dubious position by remarking that the reason for this unpleasant prominence is because we are a “young, small and borrowing country." When we grow up and become a big nation, and no longer have to borrow to relieve our poverty, then we will be nearer the bottom than the to!> of that external trade list, in which, paradoxical as it may sound, those nearest the bottom are the peoples best off. The most prosperous countries today are those self-reliant ones which have reached nearest becoming self-contained. Those which can and do produce their own requirements by the labour of their own workers, and whose only concern with “external’' trade is to exchange surplus goods advantageously. ROOT CAUSE OF UNEMPLOYMENT We in New Zealand are the last t>f the overseas colonies to grow up, and we are still in the "dependency” stage in which we have to depend on the Mother Country to take our surplus foodstuffs raw materials, and send us in reSurn manufactured goods which we could make for ourselves. When our exports are not sufficient to pay for the goods we import, we borrow the money in London and receive payment in commodities which could have been manufactured by our idle workers here. Our position with other countries is worse than with Britain, as almost without exception we allow them to dump here much more than they will take from us in return. So we go heedlessly on, piling up our external debt by means of our wonderful ( external trade, and our farmers and their families have to slave to produce raw materials in competition with countries living under tl e lowest standards in the world, so that we can export sufficient to pay our external debts and buy goods which could be produced here by our own unemployed workers. That is the vicious circle which our Industries Department tells us keeps us "young, small and borrowing;" When we learn to stand alone and rely on our own resources, brains and labour to provide for ourselves, we wilt grow up and become a strong, wealthy country. THE WORLD’S DUMPING GROUND After putting up with jam from South Africa being dumped here from South Africa until it was reaching alarming proportions and hitting our fruitgrowers and preserving factories hard, we have at last decided to check the dumping. But jam is more or less of a luxury, and there are millions of pounds worth of other goods dumped ! here every year which we could make j for ourselves just as well as we can make good pure jam. If we had the ; sense to put up a fence which would I prevent New Zealand being .-he ; world's biggest dumping ground per head of population, then the children of our unemployed breadwinners would be able to have New Zealand “jam for tea” every night, where now their mothers have to drag to the Charitable Aid Board for bare necessities to keep them alive. The essential fact that every true and loyal New Zealander must always keep in mind is that every time he buys an imported article in preference to our home made, he is giving out his work to an outsider and a foreigner, and doing the home worker here out of a job. Every order given for New Zealand goods is throwing a pebble into our lifeless pool of depressed business. It stirs it to wide-circling activity and everyone benefits. If every family would do its bit to push our industries ahead by buying the products of New Zealand workers the spectre of unemployment would soon be laid for ever. P.A.