MUTUAL INTERESTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 November 1938, Page 5

MUTUAL INTERESTS

FARMING AND SECONDARY INDUSTRIES

MR MULHOLLAND MEETS MANUFACTURERS.

PROBLEMS OF INCREASED COSTS.

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Speaking at the opening of the annual conference of the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Federation yesterday, the Dominion President of the Farmers’ Union (Mr W. W. Mulholland) eaid his attendance did not represent a change in policy, but it did represent a change of emphasis. Mr Mulholland went on the observe i great many problems were identical throughout industry.. One today was the relationship between costs of production and returns. It was important tor farmers producing most of the export wealth of the country to have a healthy secondary industry. If they did anything that was going to injure secondary industry they would injure themselves. The same could be said so far as secondary industry was concerned in its relationship to the industriesproducing for export. New Zealand today faced the problem of keeping production at a high level. There were lands going out of production because of high costs, and machines in factories standing idle because of high costs. It was the same problem and they should get together and deal with it. “In the turmoil of the general election a great deal was heard about help for the farmer, but very little of prospective help for the manufacturer,” said the president of the Manufacturers’ Federation, Mr J. T. Spears, in his address. “As a federation we recognise and subscribe to the importance of the primary industries to the Dominion. But we assert that not only is there room for both types of industry—farming and manufacturing—but that both are necessary to the welfare of the country. There can be no truly

balanced economy in New Zealand if both types of industry are not progressively prosperous. “It is with this in mind, that we, as a manufacturers’ federation, have sought a s close alliance with the farming community, and I am glad to be able to say that the results so far are distinctly promising for the future,” he said. “Just as we are able to see sympathetically the farmers’ problems, so the farmer is able to understand our viewpoint and needs. “The problems that concern us both have to do with mounting costs. These orcblems are, in the main, .the result of the legislation of the present Government. Filled with the idealist’s desire to make the Dominion 'a workers’ paradise,’ it has enacted laws that are hampering farmers and manufacturers in producing goods as cheaply as is necessary to meet external competition, and has increased costs to the farmer to an extent that negatives the Government’s attempts in other directions to help him."