ECONOMIC INDUSTRIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 258, 31 October 1932, Page 10

ECONOMIC INDUSTRIES.

As one keenly interested in the development of New Zealand manufacturing industries, and having had some part in tariff matters concerning them, it is a matter of some concern to see the position taken up by Great Britain in the matter of what industries should be developed in New Zealand. As a son of the Old Country, who has reached the age of discretion I strongly resent the old man interfering in our domestic affairs, and do not think I am impertinent in asking how many of the great industries, at the time of their inception, were economic in the sense it is desired to place upon industries in New Zealand. I have questioned many authorities as to what constitutes an economic industry, and have never received a definite reply that accounted for the existence of many of the greatest industries in their present locations. (Many hazy replies have been given relating to something grown or taken out of the soil, or still more hazy references to the aptitude of a certain population to certain industries, to inherited skill, but a clear cut definition has not yet been given, for the simple reason that none can be given. It is not the industry that decides its economic value, but a series of constantly changing, unstable factors, the effect of which can only be overcome or stabilised by power outside the industry itself. Economics are not yet a science, but only a series of conclusions, arrived at from post mortems, by persons ignorant of many qualifying conditions that produced the result they attempt to explain. If, as in the majority of the great British industries, the bulk of the materials used are imported, and the machinery used in their production is universal, then only manufacturing cost, largely that of wages, remains, and what is an economic wage varies in every country. Experience in Free Trade England, and in the U.SA., both before and after protection tariffs, lias convinced mo that so-called economic wages are bound up in the question of home or expefrt trade. What are the economic values of millions of pounds' worth of imports to a country that has thousands of work people without a job, who are able to produce the goods imported ? In spite of repeated warnings of what must inevitably happen, Great Britain has deliberately followed a policy that has | resulted in the present condition, and now seeks to influence those of her family who deliberately left her shores to seek better conditions. Certainly those of us who are outside the immediate family circle have nothing to gain by allowing any interference in our national development, especially from those who remained at home, and have so palpably mismanaged their own industrial affairs. There is no doubt in the minds of those who know their England that under proper land laws there is sufficient grazing land to grow all the meat required, and all tlie milk and butter. Many other articles of food could be enumerated, and it can be safely assumed that the awakening will come before -tlie world is very much older. The ever-spreading use of machinery will kill the British export trade, and England will be compelled to develop her own food supply. The attempt to hold back tlie industrial development of the growing nations, that were once her colonies, must, and will, be futile. New Zealand can never solve her problem of unemployment on the lilies of llie Ottawa Conference. CHARLES J. WARD.