PROBLEM OF COSTS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 59, Issue 43, 30 November 1938, Page 6

PROBLEM OF COSTS.

FARMERS AND MANUFACTURERS.

MANY IDENTICAL PHASES

(Per Press Association.)

WELLINGTON, November 29

“It is a unique occasion,” said the president of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union (Mr W. W. Mulholland), speaking at the opening of the annual conference of the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Federation in Wellington today. Mr Mulholland said the attendance of the president of the Farmers’ Union at a meeting of the Manufacturers’ Federation did not represent a change of policy; but it did represent a change of emphasis. “We have' looked at the position together and found that matters in which our interests were common greatly over-weighted matters in which our interests were Mulholland said. He quoted American writing on the relationship of primary and secondary industries, and emphasised the necessity to agriculture of a sufficient production in other industries.

“We talk about primary and secondary industries,” he said, “but when you try to figure it out you find that about half of what we call secondary industries are primary, and that not a few called primary are secondary. Let us think about industry in this country as a whole, for the . material welfare <>f New Zealand as a whole depends on its iudustrv.”

Mr Mulholland said a great many problems were identical throughout industry. One to-day was the relationship between the costs of production and returns. It was important for farmers producing most of the export wealth of the country to have a healthy secondary industry. If they did anything that was going to injure secondary industry they would injure themselves. The same could ho said of secondary industry in its relationship to industries producing for export. Now Zealand to-day faced the problem of keeping production at a high level. There were lands going out of production because of high costs, and machines in factories standing idle because, of nigh costs. It was the same problem, and they should get together and deal with it.