PROTECTION V. BORROWING.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1665, 26 November 1887, Page 3

PROTECTION V. BORROWING.

The Bell, in a leader on the Auckland Industrial Association's first annual report just published, thus ■peak* on one feature therein which has its lessons:—" In the last year the various manufactories in the colony have turned out goods to the value of £7,436,649. In other words had it not been for them the amount of seven and a half millions sterling would have been sent away from the colony to purchase goods at the uttermost ends of the earth. Our local factories therefore have kept in the colony seven and a-half millions itwling of money in the year; in other words, as the money laved is money, our local manufastories have gained or created seven and a-half millions of money in the colony in a single year. Now when we see the fuss that is made about the necessity of borrowing one million or two millions; when we see it maintained that these sums are necessary to lubricate the wheels of State; that unless they are borrowed and brought here there will be danger of commercial collapse, what shall we say of the noble army of workers who have virtually created seven and a-half millions among ourselves in the year and every year ? Such a testimony to the value of local industry is indeed of a very startling kind, and it is impossible to suppress the conviction, that if, instead of borrowing two millions, we could by fiscal arrangements, or any other tystem possible, stimulate colonial industry upward from seven and a-half millions to nine and a-half, we would do incomparably more for the good of the colony than if we wheedled the two millions out of the pockets of the English moneylenders. The two millions borrowed would he an additional drain of £BO,OOO a year on this debt-ridden, interest-driven colony. The two millions added to our output would cause no drain but be a perennial fountain of wealth. And yet our "assembled wisdom" at Wellington are asked to believe that the first duty is to clip, squeeze, and borrow; and the last duty, and one that may be put off till next year, is, the considering of steps that wonld probably add, not two millions, but four or five millions annually to our locally created .wealth!"