OUR INDUSTRIES

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1046, 9 August 1930, Page 6

OUR INDUSTRIES

Builders and Wreckers OUR INDUSTRIAL FUTURE Self-Reliance or Helplessness? THE manufacturing industries of New Zealand have been built up by many years of enterprise and organisation but have been crippled in their development by the welter ot imported goods dumped here from outside countries. Luv nig an imported article when better value is obtainable from the locally-made is like dropping a monkey wrench into the machinery of our industries. Without the goodwill and s | port of our own people our local industries would become tit only for scrapping.

The new tariff ia already stimulating local production, and we hear of overseas firms arranging the opening of branch industrial plants here, employing our people and using our local materials, the production of which wiiJ also provide extra employment. The new tariff will mean increased prices for all imported lines, and those who wish to avoid the increased cost of living will turn more and more to our own made goods, if for no other con sideration than the money-saving aspect.

HIGHER PRODUCTION AND LOWER COST

Two essential factors for driving New Zealand out of the industrial doldrums it has drifted into are increased production to add to the national income, and a reduced cost of production to assist toward a greater output of wealth. The two things go hand in hand, as the increased demand for New Zealand goods will enable our factories to produce more goods from the same buildings and machinery, and the overhead charges in fixing the price of goods will be spread over a much larger output and so reduce the cost of production. This will enable our manufacturers to meet the increased burden cf taxation without passing it on to buyers of their products, and every new industry which is started here not only means more employment for our idle workers, but more big concerns to share the national burden of taxation which is now becoming a crush ing load on the too few who have t-> bear it. FOREIGN TRADERS EVADE TAXES Every pound spent on the purchase of goods made here helps the manufacturer to meet his share of the in come-tax, land-tax, local rates, and

ctlicr contributions to the running of tile country; but our tax-gather gleans nothing from tbe outsiders, who profit so handsomely by dumping their surplus goods here. On the con trary, we have to contribute heavily to the national exchequer by paying customs duties on almost everything landed. In Australia tbe new tariff walls are compelling manufacturers of world renown to open branch plants in the Commonwealth, which will employ Australian labour and convert raw Australian mat-trials into the finished products. The General Elections in Canada have resulted in the return of the high tariff party, and our sister Dominion is looking for greater safeguarding of her manufactures, which have already develoDed at an amazing pace since the war, and the high tariff fence just erected by Uncle Sam ill soon l>e countered by a similar one from Canada to shelter her own workers. OUR DOMINION A DUMPING GROUND While oilier countries arc raising the invisible tariff barriers higher and higher against outside products, and leaving us no opening for selling them our surplus products, we must protect our own interests by retaliatory action, or else be ready to throw a spanner into our industrial machinery and “junk” it, relying on other countries to make our manufactured wealth for us and admitting our incapacity to produce our own requirements.

Industrial production in New Zealand cannot remain stationary and stagnant while other countries are forging ahead and becoming more and more self-reliant and self-sufficient as crude and primitive industries are added to by manufacturing development, and the most profitable sources of wealth production become expanded by judicious fostering. Canada is no longer content to manufacture for home requirements, but is becoming

one of the great exporting countrie* manufactured goods, and her natin„ i prosperity no longer depends on Tv Wheat nt of Chicago or the Uve grain market. Australia u same path of development, and progress rapidly as her come more intensely developed OUR UNENVIABLE POSITION Dut New Zealand remains depended, on outside workers to supply as goods to the value of nearly a lion pounds a week, for a populate,-,' of one million and a-third, which i almost as stationary as our production. “** The more that weekly bill f or imported goods can be cut down by home production by our own workers from our own materials, the greater New Zealand wilt grow and the more she will flourish We must rid ourselves of that jw feriority complex, and lose the notion that we are unable to clothe and shoe ourselves, or meet the majority of our requirements in the matter of necessaries and luxuries. We must have the fullest confidenro iu our capacity to produce for on.' selves, and show that confidence tnadhering rigidly to the principle of giving preference every time to the products of our own workers. By Demanding New Zealand-Made Gocds We Keep Our Machinery Humming. 7

PLAN OUTLINED

TO STIMULATE INDUSTRY

Speaking at a public meeting hey under the auspices of the Hamilton C hamber of Commerce on August e Mr. G. Mills Palmer, vice-president of the Auckland Manufacturers’ Association, summarised the needs of industrv in New Zealand by pointedly remarking:—“We need a Government with the brains and courage to do for New Zealand what Bismarck did for Germany—and what every big industrial country since his time has hid to do in its turn. A Government that will review our industries one by one —fix a standard percentage of importation. and impose a scientific flexible duty to maintain that standard, together with the necessary guarantees from industry against exploitation of the market. Such a Government will stimulate industry in New Zealand to double or treble its present volume—will absorb all available labour, iscrease the purchasing power of the people, and the local demand for primary products; and finally will wipe out all necessity for sapping the vitality and demoralising the initiative of the country with doles and other pernicious systems of unemployment insurance.”