The Daily News. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15. A WILD SCHEME.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 160, 15 October 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15. A WILD SCHEME.

The amazing State proposition to expend £500,000 annually in the development of water-power is being, debated by Parliament. The servants of the State who are managing the business of this country are evidently under the impression that if it is to shift sand a dray is the first necessity and that the matter, of the horses can stand over until some draught foals grow up. The Government has created quite a halo of romance around this water scheme, and in the mind's eye one already" sees vast buildings turning out endless cases of manufactures made by Government waterpower. The Hon. R. McKenzie has said | that the Government scheme will make New Zealand-.the largest manufacturing country in the hemisphere? Why? And then again, How ? It has been repeatedly shown that New Zealand canuo. 1 a manufacturing country, whatuir Go'vernment facilities are offered, until her primal industries are developed" to the utmost, New Zealand is not a sixteenth developed, and has no real use for a cart before the horse. The Government has no promise that its completed schema for water-power will be used. New Zealand certainly has not a manufacturing population j it has no great class which shows any intention of sinking money in manufacturing enterprises. Even with the greatest protection offered to bud- ; ding enterprises the few industries (apart from our great and very wonderful output of raw products), all manufacturers complain that they cannot make a "do" of it. The expenditure of £500,000 a year in speculative works means that industries must be created which will return to the Government interest on the borrowed outlay. It means that as we have not a manufacturing class and no manufacturers (speaking comparatively) we must first attract outside manufacturers or breed them locally. It means that even when the water-power is available and some of the customers are found that the manufactories will be infant affairs no stronger to compete with ofd manufacturing countries than at present. Mr. McKenzie says that the scheme will have the result of drafting town people to the country. He might have remarked with equal conviction that if you dropped a stone down a well it would be found resting on the tree-tops. The only possible way by which this scheme would depopulate the town and people the country would he that the greed of factories driven foy Government water-power required more raw material and therefore more tillers to supply them. It cannot be proved, even if the immense impetus to be given to the manufactures that do not exist eventuates, that New Zealand manufacturers will be able to compete with importers. If we were producing raw material so fast that we could find no market for it and had to use it somehow we might view this cart-before-the-horse business with less derision, but we have no overplus of anything but unused lands and no guarantee that the water scheme will settle the land. The price of land will always be the basis of operations. Will water-power cheapen land? Will it increase population? Will the demand for its use equal the Government's demand for the installation. The details given anticipate that most corporations will use water-power for public services, my? In all the cities and in most of the towns and townships complete services exist. Will all corporations "scrap" their plants so as to be able to obtain Government water-power? Will all corporations and companies requiring power be forced to use the Government scheme? Or does the Government intend to nationalise all undertakings requiring power? Did the buddingmanufacturers ,'ask for the scheme, and is it by way of helping to wipe out the public debt in 75 years? Why does the State desire power before it has manufactures? In tardy land settlement the State does not always work on the plan to ,be adopted in this new scheme. We

have heard that backblock settlers can have blocks but 110 roads. Water-power may help the backblocker, but roads will help him much more. No other country has ever developed water-power before it had the work to put it to, and no other country than New Zealand would hesitate if its bread and butter depended on it to concentrate wholly and solely on the land and its settlement. Every other commercial project is insignificant compared to the settlement of the land. It is the settlement of land that helps commercial enterprise and not the setting up of factories that helps the land. We want settlers more than manufacturers, man-power more than water-power, horses before carts. It is probably inevitable that this costly and entirely speculative scheme will be put Into operation, but it is not at all certain that there will foe a world-wide rush to New Zea-

land to use the power when it is available. It would ibe much more reasonable and vastly more payable to induce a world-wide rush to the land, for, all opinions to the contrary notwithstanding, New Zealand will continue to be essentially a raw material producing country during the next few generations. And she should concentrate on a business she thoroughly understands and is eminently successful in.