JAPANESE COMPETITION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 130, 5 June 1933, Page 6

JAPANESE COMPETITION.

Why all this rumpus about Japanese competition ? Arc we not busy selling them all tho scrap iron we can lay our hands on? Why grumble if this material is used to promote further industries, perhaps more menacing in character than those already established in competition witli our own? Let us at least try to be consistent. The standard wages of Japan, quoted in "The Times" cable a few days ago, are princply in comparison with the wages paid in the cotton and jute mills of India. Was not one of our most promising New Zealand industries—the iron ore industry at Onakaka, Nelson —strangled, almost at birth, owing to the dumping of Indian pig iron produced by coolies working fourteen hours per day for ninepence a day ? Were not theso industries financed by British capital? Was not the inacliincry forged by British labour? Have we any more right to complain now that wo are feeling the sting of weapons of our own manufacture than we had eighteen years ago at Gallipoli when we faced Turkish shrapnel delivered by guns installed by British armament firms? Why all this humbug and hypocrisy? Everybody knows that most of our troubles are due to selfishness in high places, and unless We can eliminate tins evil from human society it is no uso looking to the World Economic Conference or any other conference to remedy our ills. R. C. SIMMONS.