“Taranaki Central Press” FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 1937. MR SAVAGE’S PHILOSOPHY

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 460, 18 June 1937, Page 4

“Taranaki Central Press” FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 1937. MR SAVAGE’S PHILOSOPHY

Every shilling that Britain spends in New Zealand is a shilling with which to buy British manufactures, says Mr Savage, and this simple philosophy, as he calls it, leads him to oppose any negotiations that are likely to ' increase unemployment in New Zealand or adversely affect the income of the workers or producers.”

But is this philosophy so simple from the British point of view, or even from the point of view of world trade, which the new policy emerging from Westminster is intended to promote? Britain, dependent almost wholly on its export trade, on which in turn the consuming power of its people depends, must look first to the aggregate value of its sales to foreign or Imperial countries, and cannot balance its world policy on the degree of preference given to it by any country.

She cannot, in other words, be tied to any policy which, while perhaps increasing employment in New Zealand, intensifies the already appalling conditions of unemployment in Great Britain. Mr Savage is certainly putting up a great fight for the protection of the New Zealand market in Great Britain, for he fears that the treaty that is being negotiated with the United States will open the British market widely to American meat, with a consequential decrease in the consumption of New Zealand lamb and mutton. It is possibly a short-sighted view that Mr Savage and Mr Nash are taking, but at least it must be conceded that they are doing their best, within the limits of their vision, for the New Zealand farmer.

The question for argument, however, is whether they could do more for New Zealand by assisting in the development of the export trade of Great Britain, by which the consuming power of the British worker is regulated; Mr Savage s politics seem to run ahead of his economics. At least eminent economists like Sir Arthur Salter see the brightest prospects both for Domiyon and British trade in the creation of trade groups among countries having similar ideals, and this may be the soundest philosophy in the long run.