DOMINION POLITICS.

Waikato Times, Volume 108, Issue 18140, 3 October 1930, Page 2

DOMINION POLITICS.

THE COUNTRY PARTY.

ADDRESB BY LEADER. •; * » •- _ ' *. MEETING AT PUTARURU. Capt. H. M. RUshworth, M.P. for Bay of Islands, addressed a good meeting at Putaruru on Politics and Economics. Mr W. H. Lindsey presided. . The speaker dealt with three phases of domestic, Imperial, and international relations. “Ten years ago there were 100,000,000 lb. weight of buttetfat produced, whilst to-day there is 387,000,000 lb. weight of butter-fat produced, whilst there had been a decrease of 18,000 people engaged in primary production. During the last year there had been a reduction of £8,000,000 in income to the farmer; and this year it will probably be about£lo,ooo,ooo. ’Commerce is stagnant and unemployment rife and wages must fall. Although the Arbitration Court fixed wages, unemployment was increasing. The troubles of the exporting industrial section of the community were due to the fact that they had to sell in the world’s market at a gold standard, but purchase their requirements in a protected market with a paper standard. Tho Timber Industry. Addressing himself specially to the timber industry the speaker was opposed to increasing the duty on foreign timber. Timber, he said, was regarded as one of the necessities of life, and it had been stated that it should be afforded protection, but he did not agree with this. The building timber , question had become tragic and nearly half the men engaged in the building "industry were unemployed, not because there were enough houses, for there was work screaming to be done and timber was wanted, but it was too dear. In .British Columbia and Northern California the mills have to send their lumber many hundreds of miles to the ports to have it exported, and the freight charged to New Zealand averaged 7s 6d per hundred feet, and having landed in New Zealand there was a duty as high as 19s per hundred feet on sawn dressed timber, to w'hich had to be added wharfage fees, etc. If some of this timber was wanted in Putaruru and was carried by rail it had to pay 50 per cent more freight than New Zealand timber. ' There had recently been two valuable inventions of substitutes for timber. It was therefore necessary in the interest of the timber industry to get down costs. The Imperial Phase, Dealing with the Imperial phase Capt. Rushworth said Great Britain cannot feed her population of 42,000,000 for more than a few weeks in the year, and for the remainder of the year she had to import a large amount of foodstuffs, payment for which had to be made in manufactured goods. It appeared to the speaker that the Dominions, by their protective tariffs, were forcing Great Britain to buy her food-requirements from those foreign countries which were prepared to accept her manufactured goods in exchange. Should the Dominions' present policy oontinue much longer . it. wourd'lirbbably force Great Britain into going with the economic boundaries of a United States of ’Europe. Should this come about Danish butter would be admitted free intd Britain, while New Zealand butter would be taxed. With Great Britain joining the United States of Europe the British Navy would go, and that meant the disintegration of the British Empire. If this came about Canada could make satisfactory arrangements with the United States of America, but Australia and New Zealand could not and these two countries would then fall like ripe plums to the hordes of Asia. Turning to the international phase, the speaker outlined what Japan had done in agriculture and industrially, where the average farm was only 2J acres. She then turned to encouraging their own manufactures and her work in this connection was one of the wonders of the age. (But the world would not buy from her. Furthermore, other nations ’ demand that Jajan should vacate Korea and Manchuria'. If this was insisted upon and Japan had to be satisfied with her own country and keep all her people within her boundaries it simply meant that millions of her people would starve to death. Japan had rightly asked “what right has any nation or group of nations to condemn another nation to death by slow starvation?" That question had not been answered,' the speaker concluded, amid applause.