Division of Labour.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19485, 15 November 1926, Page 18

Division of Labour.

Manufacture, a term to bo preferred to " secondary industry," had an output in 1925 valued at £84,101,313, added value in the industrial process representing £31,939,893. Productive employees totalled 71,760 and wages amounted to £15,690,202, The land, buildings, plant and machinery involved were valued at £49,978,842 and motive power employed was 228,406 h.p. Excluding meat works and butter, cheese and condensed milk factories the number of employees was 68,436 and products were valued at £48,250,000. Although double the number of people were engaged in land production, the return for 1923-24 giving a total of 143,699, the proportion of producers engaged in manufacture that is not a development of primary production is sufficiently large to give pause to those who are inclined to dismiss manufacture'as a negligible factor in the development of the country. In a recent article Mr. 6. W. Clinkard, of the Department of Industries and Commerce, made some observations upon manufacturing industry in this and other Dominions which should be studied by everyone. "" - " That the Dominions will continue to develop their manufacturing production is as desirable as it is inevitable," he said, " and while the agricultural and pastoral industries must make steady progress, their influence on the growth of population is much less rapid than is the case with the so-called secondary industries. The development of manufacturing production is both a cause and an effect of increasing population, and constitutea a recognised stage .in the economic growth of new countries. Manufacturing industries will provide opportunities of appropriate employment for thousands of people who could not find place in the primary or extractive industries. ' Such industries are, in fact, only a ' rounding out' of the productive capacity of nations and an accepted feature of the broad principle of the division if labour. While all will agree that as far as possible production should follow the direction in which natural factors give the greatest assistance, there can be no justification for and no complete national success in neglecting other opportunities for increasing productive « capacity. " It is of interest to note the extent to which manufacture has become a factor in the national economy of the several British Dominions. Canada in 1922 had 462,000 people engaged in manufacture, the value of their production in that year being 2440 million dollars. Since 1900 the value of factory production in the great northern Dominion had increased more than five-fold. South Africa in 1922-23 found factory employment for 172,000 of her people, and produced manufactures valued at £75,000,000. In 1911 the employees totalled 66,000, producing goods valued at only £17,000,000. The Commonwealth in 1913 produced manufactures to the value of £161,000,000, while in 1923-24 this form of production represented £348,000,000. During the same period the number of factory employees rose from 337,000 to 430,000. " In the case of our own Dominion, the development of manufacture is also marked. Factories (not including meat works or butter, cheese, and condensed milk factories) employed in 1910-11 50,752 persons. On a similar basis, the number in 1924-25 had grown to 68,436, while the value <>f the products of these manufacturing industries increased during the same period from £20,500,000 to £48,250,000."