Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1930. AUSTRALIA'S TASK.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 50, Issue 262, 19 August 1930, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1930. AUSTRALIA'S TASK.

The solemn injunction to put their house in order that is reported to be the specific object of Sir Otto Niemeyer's conferences with the Australian Loan Council and State Treasurers, is only what could have been expected in the circumstances. Indeed it did not require a missioner from London to convey the lesson, though it may be that his review of the attitude of financiers \at Home in respect to Australia's finances may assist those responsible in their great task of remedying the position. According to the financial editor of the "Sydney Morning Herald/' the overseas creditors are ready to afford the necessary facilities, by extending the period of the present floating debts, provided the ' Commonwealth and States Governments take requisite steps to reduce the cost of production and abstain from entering the overseas capital market except for loans for funding or renewal, and raise money locally only for works that will become reproductive withm twelve months. In a comprehensive statement on the present conditions, the economics seption of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science stated that the central symptom of the present depression is the serious loss of real income, amounting probably to tens of milliions, that will occur this year, due to lower world prices, the loss falling , unequally on different classes of the community. As for the remedy, the report stated: We believe that some fall in profits and salaries and wages is inevitable. Already pressure tends to cause a reduction of costs, but more concentrated effort in this direction is still needed. Success will promote recovery." The practice of fixing wages on an index number based on certain groups of retail prices) is condemned as unsound. It is pointed out that this tends to make wages too static, both in prosperity and in adversity. A revision of the practice of wage fixation is urgently desirable. More accurate determination and classification of the unemployed is called for. The Tariff Board, in its 1928 report, said that in manufacturing industry most of the cost of production was due to over-capitalisation, high rates of pay, short hours of labour, favourable conditions of employment and restriction of output. So far as the primary producers are concerned, the general tendency may be guaged from the fact that a detailed inquiry into the pastoral industry showed that between 1911 and 1925 the cost of producing a pound of wool had increased by 7.04 d and the price bv 6.55 d, this giving a decrease of over one halfpenny in the net return. With the unfavourable movement of prices in recent seasons, it can be taken for o-ranted the position is worse now than it was in 1925. So the evidence multiplies, pointing the moral that remedy of -the existing conditions depends not only upon the various Governments taking drastic action, but also upon all sections of the public making sacrifices for the common good. As the British Economic Mission that visited Australia about a couple of years ago stated: "There lies no task before the Australian people more urgent than that of breaking the vicious circle and of bringing down the costs of production without lowering the standard of living oi , the workers as measured, not by money, but by the real wages, the reward of labour m the form of goods and service."