Worth Its Salt?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 118, 26 September 1941, Page 5

Worth Its Salt?

"*[ HE aim of this book (‘The Industrial Future of New Zealand,’ by Edmund F. Hubbard)," says the author, "is to demonstrate that within the scope of its natural resources, New Zealand may attain-even with a greater population and without a lowering of.the standard of living-a high degree of economic self-sufficiency." He then proceeds to survey our resources under various chapter headings as Pastoral, Industry, Agriculture, Forestry, Ceramics, Mineral Resources. To call them chapters is perhaps misleading. Some of them contain only a few paragraphs. All are extremely superficial, consisting of little more than a few broad facts culled from the Official Year Book followed by rather vague generalisations. One chapter, for instance, is called Marine Resources. It consists of three paragraphs which make no attempt to estimate the resources but merely throw out several suggestions, such as that iodine and isinglass and fish glue could be manufactured here. Speaking of salt, he says "The manufacture of salt should become one of the most important industries in the country." ‘He mentions no difficulties and leaves the reader imagining that it would be a simple matter for us to manufacture all the salt we need from sea-water. If this is so, Mr. Hubbard must have made a great discovery, particularly valuable to this country. For salt is not only necessary as part of our diet, it is fundamental to most chemical industries, and these in their turn %are fundamental to modern industry, as Mr. Hubbard is the first to acknowledge, And New Zealand has hitherto had to depend on other countries for its salt supplies. We have no known salt deposits, and manufacture from _ sea-water, though possible, has never been considered practicable in the quantities necessary. If new discoveries have been made to alter this, Mr. Hubbard should say so. As it is, his statement appears to be merely one more of the vague and unsubstantiated assertions which appear on every page of the book.-~ (Book Review, J. Harris, 4YA, September 3.)