The Waikato Times. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1939 COUNTRY CHANGES DIRECTION

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20988, 15 December 1939, Page 6

The Waikato Times. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1939 COUNTRY CHANGES DIRECTION

Reviewing a century of progress and what he described as the brilliant achievements of the farmers of New Zealand, Viscount Galway at the opening of the Royal Show at Invercargill touched on matters ol extreme importance to the Dominion. “New Zealand is a country which has in the past, and must in the future, exist or depend for prosperity upon the products of the land, and its future, as I see it, lies around the farming industry,” the Governor-General said. “The early pioneers,” he added, “have given us a splendid heritage, and the time has now arrived for the closing of the first chapter of New Zealand’s history. Let us look forward to .a new era with thoughts of hope and still greater progress.” These were not idle words. The closing of one chapter implies the opening of another, and what happens in that new chapter is what concerns the people of Nqw Zealand most intimately.

It is freely admitted by everyone that New Zealand in its first century of European settlement has done very well and that the major share of the credit is due to the farming community which converted the wilderness into the ordered and productive settlement of today. Progress has been rapid and uninterrupted. In all that hundred years people and government have had a conscious bias towards the land, and that bias has served New Zealand well. At the end of the first century has come a great change in the political form of government, and the Dominion’s great need is to ensure that that change does not mean retrogression. There may be no active intention to end the day of the farmers’ preponderance which has proved so successful in the past, but there is need for care that real values should not be assessed wrongly. The new form of government has decided that New Zealand shall become industrialised. To a point that decision is sound, but it would be a grave mistake to permit a policy of urban industrialism to injure the great primary industries. New Zealand may safely become a manufacturing country only to the extent that it supplies goods for internal consumption that may be produced economically. In the present state of affairs, with costs so much higher than in other manufacturing countries, it cannot foster secondary industries on an export scale. Nor can the Dominion cease to import, unless it is prepared to sacrifice the overseas market upon which the primary industries exist and from which the country draws the means of meeting overseas commitments. It cannot continue to be a seller without continuing to be a buyer. It is, however, patent that New Zealand may safely bring about a better industrial balance and thereby, among other things, gain substantially in much needed population. But the fact remains that the country’s economy has been moving, and very successfully, in one direction for a hundred years. Now the direction has been changed. Does it lead to continued success, or do difficulties lie ahead ? Whatever the reasons, farming in the past three years has ceased to progress at the former rate. Is that check only temporary, or has the new political method thrown the industry out of gear ? It may be said at once that the war is not responsible for the check; the war has, in fact, improved the immediate economic prospects of farming. Political antipathy has to some extent interfered with continued progress, and unfavourable seasons have not assisted. But generally the country’s economy is at an important stage at the opening of a new century, and all concerned should be guided by reason and not by damaging political bias.