Dumping.

Progress, Volume XVI, Issue 8, 1 April 1921, Page 185

Dumping.

Persistent rumours have been recently afloat of merchantable Oregon pine bmng offered at the main ports of New Zealand at a very low c.i.f. figure, and it is plain to see that the American lumber trade is feeling the financial stress that appears to be world-wide, and it looks as though the sawmilling industry in New Zealand will shortly be faced with the wholesale dumping ot second-class Oregon at prices very considerably below the cost of production in the country of origin, and also below the cost of production of o.b. rimu witfi which it comes into direct competition. If this dumping be allowed the industry may look forward to similar times of unemployment as those experienced round about 1907, when it was possible to market only the highest grades of our local limbers, and the greater proportion of tfie actual timber available from the bush had to be burnt. Side by side with the possibility of this disastrous state of affairs we have constant reminders in the daily Press, and cables from London reporting meetings of the Empire Forestry Association, stressing a fear of a more or less world-wide timber famine, owing to the fast disappearing sources of supply. Also we have some of the local newspapers lauding the efforts of the Institute of Architects to not only prevent the export of our native timbers but to entirely remove the duty on imported timber, and the instigators of this movement appar-

most millers and timber merchants, as the matter ently consider that by this means our local timbers will be conserved, instead of the very reverse being the result. If these people stop to think they must realise that where so large an industry as that of sawmilling is established with such vast aggregate outlay of capital, and where such a very laige body of workers and families are dependent upon the industry, it is impossible for the mills to be closed down without causing widespread unemployment and hardship. Consequently the mills must be kept going, and if prices fall and cheap dumped timber floods our markets the lower grades of our local timbers will have no sale, and as a result will either be left to rot in the bush or thrown on the slab heap and burnt. The unfortunate miller will then be again the choppingblock, for he will be accused of “slaughtering” our forests as he has been accused in the past, and wnen our American competitors have tided over their financial difficulties by this process of raising cash by dumping (meanwhile, also by so doing, keeping up their local prices) the result will be exactly as before and our industry will be left crippled owing to the temporary expedient of the American lumber industry, and the prices of Oregon will again soar. Meantime many millions of feet of available timber in our local forests at present being put to profitable uses will have gone up in smoke, many sawmillers will have been forced to the wall, and much unemployment and misery will have been caused to employees and their families in far-away corners of bush where transport is difficult and costs of moving families now comfortably settled greater than can be met at short notice by the workers concerned. And be it remembered that the average New Zealand bushman and sawmill worker is a fine stamp of man who works hard, has none of the pleasures or alleviations of the town-dweller, and is deserving of every consideration and encouragement in his industry. What is to be the use of our recently established Forestry Department, whose aims and objects—which have been so lauded of recent months by the public Press—are to bring about the better utilisation of our forest products, the economic milling of our trees and the conservation of the remainder of our forest heritage, if foreign dumping is to be allowed to displace a large percentage of these very forest products from their natural market and cause the sawmilling industry to languish, with the resultant widespread unemployment and misery among the workers in remote districts? Also it is to be remembered that the importation of the lower grade of Oregon from America means the “exportation” of the equivalent of New Zealand’s hard cash at a time when we are faced with very severe financial difficulties in our own country, and each shilling of this cash would otherwise be expended to help find employment for our own people at a time when we are faced with grave prospects of widespread unemployment-