"PRODUCTION."

Taranaki Daily News, 31 December 1919, Page 5

"PRODUCTION."

THE NEED TO WORK. RECONSTRUCTIONAL BENEFITS OP TECHNICAL EDUCATION. At the annual meeting of the New Zealand Technical School Teachers' Association, which opened at Wellington on Monday, the president (Mr. A. L. Moore, of New Plymouth) addressed the meeting In the course of his remarks he [ said:— "At no period in the history of the British nation has there been a greater need to work. The reaction after over four years of the war and strenuous endeavor is unfortunately producing the opposite ef' if ect. Wages and cost of living are rising by leaps and bounds side by side and in sympathy with each other. Wheq will the halt come, and how far can the purchasing power of the sovereign be reduced, are questions that are being asked by the thoughtful? How can we individually and as a body of teachers help to stem this calamitous tendency. All teachers, and particularly technical teachers, at this critical period have a special and particular mission in that they must redouble their efforts to assist reconstruction and endeavor to inculcate the principles of economics and social services. THE GOSPEL OP PRODUCTION. r "Reconstruction was first talked of some 18 months or two years ago, and . has been glibly and constantly used ever since with little or no practical application until it has become mere meaningless patter. The first step in any true reconstruction policy is to lay a sure foundation, and no surer foundation can be laid than that of education. In this 1 r refer particularly to technical education, because it is indissolubly bound up with our industrial life. More money must be t spent on this branch and more encouragement given by the Education Department to launch out and start any class that is needed or likely to be needed, to establish, encourage and increase efficiency in our industries. The principals of our technical schools can be safely trusted to do this, because they are keen farseeing men anxious only for the commonweal. What are we doing, for instance, to train the coming generations in the arts and science of textile manufacturing? It is conceivable that if wages have been raised 130 per cent, on pre-war rates in Great Britain that we shall be able to produce as cheap or cheaper here than at Home. "The increased.manufacture of woollen goods means' that, the wool would be treated in New Zealand and thus save an enormous sum of money paid annually in freight, not on the wool alone, but ou the dirt and grease in the wool which is sent Home. Wool-scouring then brings us to the question of treating the byproducts of the wool-scouring works, which are at present running to waste to the amount of thousands of pounds annually. Why not set up a department of oils and fats in one of the large centres? Into our woollen manufacture also comes the question of dyes. Into every industry enters the question of hydro-electric power. So the examples could be multiplied. We are essentially a country of primary industries, but the fact must not be forgotten that for the country to prosper and forge ahead we must build up our , secondary industries also. The gospel of production must be preached by every teacher in the Dominion until the idea, not the empty word, is woven into the fibre of the rising generation. The Government must assist production by providing school sites, buildings and equipment; by encouraging research work by professors and teachers and enterprise in labor-saving methods and devices by students, pupils and workers. "The expenditure on technical education is £85,000; our total production is about ,£30,000,000. If technical education, by mors encouragement, can increase the production only one per cent. ( £300,000) it is obviously worth while to double or treble the expenditure on technical education. "Now that we have the new Parliament elected with a good working majority, there should be no delay in the vigorous prosecution of a reconstruction policy. There is any amount of data to work on in that excellent report of the Industries Committee. I have not quoted figures and'specific instances because the Press throughout the Dominion have already dealt fully with this report. INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS. "The mention of the word 'production' immediately brings me to the second part of the mission of the teachers, and that is to include in the curriculum of every secondary school at least the elements of economics. lam not concerned with the guise in which you introduce it, so that it is introduced. It could be included partly in your history and partly in your civics. I know of no more interesting matter than the industrial history of the past 100 years, the effect on the present and the repetition of some of its problems. Let us give every boy and girl who has a future vote a clear idea of their independence and responsibility to the rest of the community. Let them understand by explaining to them in simple language the principal laws that govern their every day life—economics in its simplest form. Xam sure that if we could only get the workera to realise the laws governing wages, production and cost of living, the clamor for the first would cease, a concentration take -place on the second, and the last would be solved. SOCIAL SERVICE. "The last item (and perhaps the most important) I am going to deal with is to inculcate into our children the spirit of social service. In a society constituted as we are we cannot afford to ignore our neighbors' welfare and live for ourselves alone unless we wish to endanger the whole social structure. All the school institutions may be (and so far as I have seen are) used for fostering this spirit. We must make it grow and expand until in every boy or girl of an age to leave school it will lie the finest attribute of a citizen, ai d will be the broad base of a social life in which it wltl be a plea<un to live."