THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1909. THE NEED FOR EXPORTS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3107, 3 February 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1909. THE NEED FOR EXPORTS.

The trade returns of the Dominion for 190S contain an ample explanation of the causes unnderlying the financial stringency. The value of our exports declined from well over £20,000,000 in 1907 to £16,300,00J in 1908. Wool and flax were mainly responsible for this depreciation, and butter did not swell our export trade as it might have done but for the drought of a year ago. It ought to he plain to

Ie crudest mind that wit dearly iree and three-quarter ir 0 f our.ds sterling thus ' the juntr.v our prosperity A , jre to be becked. pai ticuldilj tfche .firancsV. I eprcssion curre- /t throughout the ivilisod world p any special inaneial acc( being aranged. H' jW'owr., there is no causa or alarm situation, says the ~r j "-iHerald," provided reasonable n e;ygiie K ]y is displayed in both P r * v .ate and public affairs, and if u ,ipcv)iitalile and unpromising bus? nes.s -if avoided by our administrators.' Unhappily, when Government; become economical th«y tend to disjplay their activity by cutting off 'trains which are building up business, while they continue to run scores of losing trains upon hopelessly unprofitable railways in other parts of the Dominion. What the Government ought to do, in addition to the

practice of a wise economy, is to open up the ilocked-up lands. There are hundreds and thousands of stalwart men anxiously watching for an opportunity >tso get to work upon the land, which opportunity, lor some mysterious motive, the Government declines to give them. By the settlement of the idle land, b> the making productive of what now is waste, the export trade of the Dominion can be surely and swiftly revwed, and the lohs caused by falling prices and bad seasons most effectively guarded against. When men want to work on idle land and the whole community feels the effect of a reduced national income, not to pursue an active land settlement policy is unpardonably bad administration.