TOO MANY EATERS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 132, 13 September 1910, Page 4

TOO MANY EATERS.

The world is in a fury of manufacture. Every nation desires to mop up raw material faster than the earth grows it. Tlio agriculturists of the last generation are the manufacturers r.i this generation—the eaters, not the producers of food. The growth of towns is the boast of "progressive" nations. These nations look upon customs returned and large populations of factory operatives as evidence of wealth. The producing nations cannot supply the using nations as fast as the latter can mop up the supply. Every new manufactory employing labor represents diminished workers in essential pursuits. A cablegram published yesterday mentioned that a business peer of Britain had 3aid that there was scarcity of raw material for textile manufacture in England, ''he prodigious sum of £840,000,000 is nunk in textile manufactures in England, and the various branches employ 1,200,000 people—almost one and a quarter times the population of New Zealand. It is certain that great manufacturers base their possible output on the supposition that the world must go on producing all the raw material necessary for gross overproduction. It is a fact, however, that the ' world is not at present producing sufficient raw material to keep wage-earners busy in producing manufactured articles, and that a combination of producers of raw material could ruin nearly all the ' great trades of England by refusing supjljy. The failure of any great enter- % •',.,., ~..,...., ~,,,. .. ; . - : . ... ..- ,„

prise depending on the foreigner for material would emphasise the need in any | manufacturing country for a return to ! productive pursuits. It is because the necessity has not arisen that Britain does not cultivate to the full extent of its capacity, and as the Empire either 'will not or cannot produce the material required, it follows that millions of operatives all over the Home country are dependent for their bread on the foreign primal producer. Industrial troubles in England will possibly have the result of giving the outer Empire many of the eaters, who. in more natural surroundings, may become producers of food, for the Empire is wide, and tens of millions of acres of it have never met a plough.