THE GROWTH OF IMPORTS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3185, 10 May 1909, Page 3

THE GROWTH OF IMPORTS.

DECREASE OF EXPORTS. A SERIOUS PROBLEM. AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE. The financial condition of almost any business firm depends entirely on the difference between its receipts ■nnd its expenditure. It is much the same with a nation. When its receipts are greater than its expenditure it is counted prosperous. When its expenditure is greater than its receipts the financial condition is dangerous. It would be we'd in these clays of so called financial stringency for the peonle of the Dominion to study the national balance-sheet very carefully. The receipts of this country are almost altogether represented by its exports, and its expenditure by its imports. Our exports during the last few years have shown a very serious decline. In 1906 we exported produce to the value of £17,554,850. In 1907 we reached the highest mark for exports ever recorded, our exports totalling £19,687,573, exclusive of specie. The year 1908 showed a fall to £36,603,280, a decrease of over £3,000,000. The year 1909 shows a still further decrease in exports, the total being only £15,346,033, or a decrease of a million and a-quarter sterling. No country the size of New Zealand can endure a reduction of over two million pounds a year without serious consequences. Even if our expenditure has fallen in proportion to our receipts, or, in other words, if our imports had been reduced in conformity with our reduction in exports, the position would have been still more serious; but this has not been the case. During the same period our imports have increased by considerably over a million pounds. It is interesting to note the growth per head of our European population in exports and imports. The value of imports has risen from £9 4s lOd per head in 1895 to £l3 16s 6d in 1907, whilst the exports have only risen from £l2 7s per head to £2l 16s Sd during the same period. What are the reasons for this portentous change in the difference between imports and exports,? There are two reasons. The minor one is, no doubt, the higher and more expensive style of living so common today. The major one is the difference in the proportion of primary producers per head of our population. Nearly seven-eighths of the exports of this country are represented by agricultural products, consequently, to put the matter briefly, the reason why our exports have not Kept pace with our imports is due to the fact tnat land settlement and farming have not kept pace with the growth of our population. » The decrease in our exports durng'the last two years, due to the drop in value of wool and hemp arid such-like things, is not taken into account. The gain of lmportson exports per head of population up to "l 907, the record ypar for exports, is great enough without accentuating it by a sudden drop of nearly 4J milliors. Trie only point worth putting for-.var.d is the ab-

solute necessity of increasing the products from the land. Evti-yotie is familiar with Mieawber'a financial axiom, "Income one por.jid, expenditure nineteen and sixpence, happiness ;md prosperity; income one pound, expenditure one pound and sixpence, iuin awl misery." New Zealand has by no means reached the later condition, but we cannot shut our eyes to the disturbing fact that for a country depending almost entirely on its i agricultural products to pay for its imports, nt-ither land settlement, nor agricultural production have developed anything like as fast as j they ought to have done. This is | due to the fact that our national I affairs are ruled by mere politicians instead of statesmen. The men at the head of our Government have been more interested in playing with unsatisfactory land legislation than in encouraging land settlement. Men like Messrs Powlds and Hogg have laboured hard to substitute the leasehold tenure for the freehold, and have succeeded undoubtedly in giving un- ' earned increment to men who could not have got it through the freehold, and have encouraged a spirit of gambling at the ballot which could never be indulged in by men who depended upon the produce of land for their living.

During the last ten years of unexampled agricultural prosperity the Government have only settled something over 3,000,00) acres out of tneir 30,000,000 acres of unsettled country, and during the last few years, and settlement has only taken place at the rate of a few hundred thousand acres per year, and then the bulk of this settlement has beer, on the rough, wild country of the West Coast, Nelson, and Otsgo, where the possibilities for production may be guaged by the very low rentals asked for very large areas. The amount of good land offered for settlement during the last ten years has been singularly small, and it is the working of good land after all which affects production. The Crown own, and have owned for years, considerable areas of good land to the eastward of the Main;; Trunk line in the King Country. It is land well suited for settlement in small areas and for intensive farimng, yet it lies idle at the present time. It.is net so much, however,' the settlement or lack of settlement of Crown lands which is preventing the increase of agricultural production in New Zealand. IL »s the locking up of the Maori lands. Millions of acres of Maori-owned soil, and the whole Maori population of New Zealand, are held idle because the Government of the country cannot or will not evolve some simple method by which the white settler can occupy land which the Maori does not want, or by which the intelligent and inj dustrious of the Maoris can secure ! from their own land the fruit 3 of their own labour. The value of imports per head has more than doubled during the last ! fourteen years. The value of exports | per head, to secure real prosperity, | should have increased at a greater ! ratio than this, in order to make up I for our increased national expenditure I and borrowing. That they have not done so is proved by cold, bare statistical returns. In spite of the

fact that the Dominion has built up numerous manufacturing industries and that tariffs have been specially arranged to encourage this process, the increase of imports goes on, and unless we can turn the tide and increase our exports we shall soon reach that period when our expenditure is greater than our receipts. As we have already pointed out, the only way to increase our income and the proportion of receipts to expenditure is to increase the production of the land. Land has this wonderful faculty under skilful management—the more it is made to give the it is capable of giving. More than this, man has only to be given a reasonable opportunity for securing land and he wilJ work it to the best of his ability. There are millions of acres of land in New Zealand useless for want of occupants. There are many thousand of able-bodied Maoris degenerating through idler es beca use they are not allowed to work their own soil. There are tens of thousands of industrious Europeans anxious to obtain farms in New Zealand, and yet we are allowing our impor'ts to creep up to the value of our exports, because we have no one in authority capable of or desirous of evolving a popular land settlement policy. —Auckland "Herald."