THE MANUFACTURERS’ RESPONSIBILITY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 January 1939, Page 4

THE MANUFACTURERS’ RESPONSIBILITY.

yyillLE it is clear enough lhat there is and ought to be a field for the expansion of manufacturing industry in New' Zealand, it is very necessary that manufacturers should make enterprising and capable use of their opportunities. An answer evidently is needed, for instance, to charges like those made by a Wellington trader who was reported as declaring, at the end of last week, that:—

If the Government prohibits the importation of woollen piece goods, the shops will be empty in six months. The New Zealand factories are at present months behind with thenorders, and could not hope to meet more than a small fraction of the normal demand.

The same trader was further reported as accusing manufacturers of so delaying the execution of orders for seasonal goods that, the season was lost. Another statement was that business firms which had paid full price for New Zealand manufactures sometimes found their competitors selling similar goods which had been obtained at a discount of anything up Io fifty per cent.

If allegations of this'kind are unfounded, Dominion manufacturers should be very ■ willing to expose and rebut, lhem. Not only in the interests of traders, but in. those of the consuming public. Ihe state ol allairs suggested ob\iousl\ could not be allowed to continue. Manufacturers will show poor foresight, as well as an indifferent sense of responsibility, if they attempt to shelter lazily behind restrictions and seek their profit in skimming the cream ol a scarcity market. In view of the amount of protection now being >given in one way and another to New Zealand manufacturing industry, these questions of adequate and sustained production imperatixelv demand attention.

Rightly or wrongly the idea pi-evails widely in this country that some of our manufacturers are far from being hilly up-to-date in their methods and that there is in some instances an obvious neglect of measures of organisation that would ensure more efficient and economical product ion. A landliar example is that of our woollen factories, most of which are said to he engaged in an unduly wide range of production, thereby sacrificing advantages ol specialisation which would be easily within their reach if they organised to that end.

Here, again, it is for manufacturers to show, if they can, that criticism on these lines is unwarranted and that, it is necessary for wooden factories in New Zealand each to manufacture a wide range of goods, though a similar policy in Yorkshire, or in the European centres of woollen manufacture, would be unthinkable.

Whatever niav be true of this or that detail, a high and rising standard of' manufacturing efficiency plainly is demanded in such conditions as are now developing m the Dominion 11 is essential that such standards should be set and maintained in manufacturing industry as will enable distributors to carry on their business in reasonable conditions and Inc buying public to satisfy their requirements at fair prices, balllire i.v manufacturers to do their part in occupying their avadalde internal market would undermine the whole elaboiatc structure of' protection and regulation.