Some Timely Advice

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 928, 22 March 1930, Page 6

Some Timely Advice

NEW GOVERNOR-GENERAL OFFERS EXCELLENT SUGGESTION

“Buy More N.Z. Goods”

THE new Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, one of the ablest agriculturists in the British Empire, has lost no time in New Zealand in penetrating to the pith of the Dominion’s industrial and economic troubles. His Excellency sees the solution of a delicate problem in an increased consumption of New Zealand goods and the application of scientific knowledge to industrial practice. While admitting that unemployment—“that incubus of practically every country”—taxes the highest ingenuity of statesmanship, the Governor-General has offered, as constructive advice, the suggestion that New Zealanders should help themselves by stimulating tbeir own industries and aiming at sympathetic co-operation between employer and employee.

The public is now beginning to realise the cause of the clouds of depression which have settled over the Dominion for the past year or two, with its wave of unemployment, which threatens to become a “permanent wave” of an undesirable type. It is known now that the “scarcity of money” is mostly due to the fact that we cannot spend it abroad and have it

here at the same time, and the rousing messages of the former GovernorGeneral (Sir Charles Fergusson), the Prime Minister (Sir Joseph Ward), the Right Hon. J. G. Coates, and others, have pointed the people to the cause and cure of bad times here, and have urged on us our paramount duty to produce for ourselves instead of importing from overseas what can be made here.

And now Lord Bledisloe, the new Governor-General, emphasises their opinion, adds to it his own scientific knowledge and puts the policy in the forefront of his advice to the Dominion. The serious fall in the price of staple exports has greatly reduced the national income of the community, and that loss must be made up by increased production from our agricultural and manufacturing resources. We can become temporarily rich by borrowing abroad, but the day of repayment always finds us poorer than ever. Most of our loans raised overseas reach us in the form of manufactured goods, which we could provide for ourselves from our own materials, and we rarely get the loans in the form of established credits here for developing our resources in the direction of greater production. There s practically no money available for either land or industrial development, and the record amounts on fixed deposit in our banks and other financial institutions show that investors lack confidence in our own capacity to use their capital profitably in the various fields of wealth production. The timid investor has no sense of security, and it is imperative that we all get together to establish confidence in ourselves and a spirit of selfreliance and independence which will enable us to build up a self-contained and self-sustaining community, which will become immune from these cycles of depression and bad business which

follow the fluctuations of the external trade on which we have had to rely in the past. We do not need the gloom-mongers or calamity-howlers to tell u s that business is all to pieces, or that the bottom has fallen out of the countrr | We can see the cause of the trouble ! and rocking the boat is not going to* help matters. We must set our jaws i and pull together with gTit and dej termination, driving our little country ' ahead to prosperity and happiness for ! all. | Everyone must lend his weight, | and every ounce of it. The farmer i who produces the raw materials | and the sinews of our strength. I The transporter, who brings the products to our factory doors. The shopi keeper, who distributes our workers’ goods to the community. And las: of all, the const!' s, who must pull together by demanding the products of their fellow New Zealanders. Without the weight of public patronage behind him the worker here can find no market for his products, and by turning aside from his goods we are turning him out of his job and keeping our machinery of production ■ idle. Our workers are only too anxious to pull their weight, and produce all the wealth that can humanly be expected of them. Are our shopkeepers helping by putting in all the weight they can to drive ahead the sale of the goods made by their own best customers? Are all our buyers heeding the vital warnings of our | leading men and demanding Now sa- ] land goods in preference to outside ! products? Let us AH Buy New Zealand Goods First, British Goods Next, and thus Lift our Own Country out of a Morass and, at the Same 1 Time, Help the Motherland.