The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1930 PITCH AND POLITICIANS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 889, 5 February 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1930 PITCH AND POLITICIANS

THERE is all old saying that one cannot touch pitch without becoming defiled. This proverb appears to have been taken too literally by New Zealand administrative politicians. They have done nothing to check the dumping of foreign asphalts into this country to the great disadvantage of local industry and the producers of tar and special preparations for road improvement. The position has become serious enough to demand and deserve the remedial consideration of the Government, whose interest in the development of manufacturing industries is no more substantial than the brilliant evening rainbow, which promises good weather, but quickly fades away. A few days ago the chairman of the Auckland Gas Company explained to its shareholders and customers that the reduction of over £5,000 in the company’s revenue last year was more than accounted for by the reduced price at which tar had been sold in order to meet fierce competition from bituminous products. Sir George Elliot told the much too common story of excessive commercial and industrial loss because of the New Zealand extravagant habit of helping every country except itself, and told it well. But it can be observed that, in spite of his impressive argument against the free dumping of foreign asphalt and tarry stuff, “the half was never told.”

The experience of a progressive gas company is alone bad enough, but it merely indicates and emphasises the general plight of similar companies throughout the Dominion and kindred industrial organisations, whose manufactures, the production of which provides employment for New Zealand workers and business for New Zealand traders, include tar, road-sealing materials, and many by-products such as disinfectants, paints, creosotes, naphthalene and the like. One company, for example, with five different plants in operation—anything but overworked —and with an annual payroll of £IO,OOO is hindered and badly handicapped by the increasing importation of foreign materials. The increase in such imports has been remarkable within recent years. Five years ago the importation of asphalt and bitumen from Mexico was valued at the waterfront at £4,880 —not a conspicuous ftem in the list of imports. Last year Mexico received close on £70,000 from this country for similar products. Free traders contend, of course, that imports save the New Zealand exporters from immediate ruin and final extinction, but it would take something more powerful than a microscope to see in the exports from this country to Mexico the value and wisdom of their argument.

It has been stated authoritatively that New Zealand Government departments have been most prominent and therefore least patriotic in their extensive use of foreign materials for the construction of better roads. Perhaps bitumen from Mexico is more durable than special t<lr preparations made in New Zealand, hut what is to be said about the Government’s policy in permitting the Public Works Department to cut distilled tar out of its roadsealing work altogether and substitute imported American liquid asphalts to the extent of thousands of drums a year ? Great Britain uses comparatively little imported asphalt and favours British tar. Those who have motored on the highways of the United Kingdom would laugh at the New Zealand Main Highways Board and the Public Works Department if either or both dared to assert that the Dominion’s roads are better surfaced or more durable under motor traffic. Then the local bodies in this country are no wiser than the State authorities and representatives.

Is there any remedy? The answer plainly and simply is “Yes”! There is no reason against the use of New Zealand distilled tar exclusively for road priming or first-coat work. If this were done by the State department, the highways board, and the local bodies concerned with highway improvement, it would not be necessary for New Zealand industrialists to consume a million gallons of tar, containing valuable by-products, every year for fuel purposes. It is to be regretted that the Administration has no prom.otive policy in regard to the Dominion’s manufacturing industries. The Government spent a year teaching one administrator the responsible job of Minister of Industries and then abruptly transferred him after he had learnt it. The new Minister will require a year to learn the same lesson. By that time unemployment may be so rife that the country wall be glad to dismiss the poorest Government in its history.

MAKING MATERNITY SAFER

NEW ZEALANDERS have no reason to be proud of their country’s record of maternal mortality. For the past twentyyears it has been considerably higher than should be the case in a land so well-endowed medically and educationally, and—what is of greater significance—the annual percentage of puerperal deaths actually was higher in 1928 than for a period of twelve months two decades ago. This alone is a sufficient and unanswerable argument in favour of the Dominion-wide appeal soon to he launched for the purpose of providing funds to reorganise the midwifery department of the New Zealand School of Medicine.

Frequently, and with every justification, the Plunket system of infant welfare receives the plaudits of the world. Its remarkable success is proved by the fact that New Zealand’s present infant mortality rate of 39 in every thousand births is considerably lower than that of any other country and less than half that of the majority of States and Nations. But the highly satisfactory result of the Plunket Society’s organisation and work must not he permitted to overshadow the existing position relating to maternal mortality. This obstetrical problem is outside the purely advisory province of the society, and the annual figures relating to it disclose a lamentable lack of progress. The decision to organise midwifery training and establish a Chair of Obstetrics at the Otago Medical School should be welcomed by every community for these statistics emphasise that it is long overdue. Dame Janet Campbell, senior medical officer for maternity and child welfare to the British Ministry of Health has said: “Midwifery for long has occupied a position of inferiority in the medical curriculum as compared with medicine or surgery. Insufficient time has been allowed for its study; much of the instruction has been haphazard and in the hands of comparatively inexperienced teachers, while clinical practice has been inadequate.” Though her remarks were not directed at any particular eountrjq they may be applied to New Zealand for, up to the present, training in midwifery and obstetrics has been seriously neglected. Dunedin being the centre of medical training in New Zealand it is reasonable that the first step in the reorganisation of midwifery should be made there and, of course, it is necessary that the Chair of Obstetrics should be founded in the Otago Medical School. Later it may be desirable to extend the organisation of more complete midwifery training to other centres. Meanwhile, however, the Obstetrical Endowment Appeal Society of New Zealand is preparing to issue next month an appeal for the necessary funds and Auckland’s share has been set down at £7,500. Clearly it is the duty of every responsible citizen to offer generous support.