OUR INDUSTRIES

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 951, 19 April 1930, Page 6

OUR INDUSTRIES

Industry’s Golden Eggs

HELPING LOCAL PRODUCTION

The Way to Prosperity

EASTERTIDE and eggs have been associated front antiquity, and tlie egg is symbolic of productiveness and the development of new living forces. Our productiveness is the barometer of our prosperity, and every new industr\ which is hatched here adds to the sum total of our natural income upon which the wealth, health and happiness ol' our people depend.

The folly of having “all the eggs in one basket” has been proverbial through the ages, and New Zealand’s depression and stubborn epidemic o£ unemployment is due to our lack of wisdom in over-concentration on the production of raw materials, crude products and foodstuffs, with our neglect of the higher branches of industry which return far greater value for the labour expended on them, and develop those arts and crafts which distinguish the more highly civilised countries from those engaged in the more primitive forms of production. FOSTERING OUR INDUSTRIES Thanks to man’s inventive faculties and the mechanisation of industry, even the incubation of eggs is no longer dependent on the whims of a broody hen borrowed from a neighbour, nor is the function of rearing the newly-hatched chicks left to such precarious mediums as mother birds. So, too, the birth of new industries is now a question of large capital, costly machinery, scientific management, and quantity production. The need of the hour in New Zealand is the bringing

forth ancl fostering of new industries, and the expansion of those already established, which have proved their worth by the high standard and quality of their products. There are two means by which the birth of new industries and the expansion of existing ones can be secured. One is by the determination of our own people to demand the products of our own workers, and the other is that the statesmanlike policy of sheltering and safeguarding our young industries against dumping and unfair competition with low-living countries, whose workers do not enjoy our high standard of living. Scientists may argue which came first, the chicken or the egg, and whether an egg is a “primary’ or “secondary” product. Old-school economists dating back to Adam, or Adam Smith, will contend that industries should be allowed to develop naturally, that our golden industrial eggs should be left to hatch unaided, and the chicks which are to be our future wealth producers must scratch for themselves. But the wise owner watches his incubator and brooder with unceasing vigilance and care if

' he is to reap the reward of his out- ! lay and labour. Our industries need every aid which can be provided by industrial and scientific research, and those who would found new industries here for developing our resources and employing our idle workers are entitled to the fullest measure of protection. Without it they will continue to dump their goods here from outside instead of establishing their industries here and building up our prosperity. Through our importing craze, which is the highest of any country iu the world, we have starved our own industries and thrown our own industrial workers on to the streets, and there will be no Easter eggs of joy and gladness for them. They can only look gloomily forward to the threat of a hard winter. Those countries which have had the wisdom to foster and shelter their own industries are feeling least the world cycle of low prices *and depressed markets. While our politicians are talking and squabbling over all sorts of patent panaceas for alleviating the unemployment evil, the people of New Zealand have the remedy in their own hands and pockets by a whole-hearted and unchanging determination to buy the products of our industrial workers, and by their refusal to keep the workers of other countries busy while our own are haunting doss houses and soup kitchens. Sooner or later Parliament must do its duty, but in the meantime let our Easter shoppers and holiday-makers think of their fellow New Zealanders, who depend for (heir wages on our buying their products. Our manufacturing industries are the geese whiel lay the golden eggs to maintain over 100,000 workers in employment. Do not kill the industrial bird which lays the golden eggs. Help it to lay bigger and better eggs instead of fattening foreign cuckoos. Give Preference to New Zealand

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