DEVELOPMENT PROBLEMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 35, 11 February 1939, Page 8

DEVELOPMENT PROBLEMS.

INDUSTRIAL SCIENTISTS NEEDED (To the Editor.) | According to recent "Star"' report?. New Zealand manufacturers may soon bo short of raw materials, unless import restrictions are made less stringent. What is likely to prove a still greater problem is a shortage of very necessary skilled' labour, if industrial expansion is to proceed. In the early davs of American industrial development manufacturers found themselves hopelessly handicapped for want of craftsmen skilled in the dyeing and other trades. Not before long and costly negotiations with England's experts were they able to enter seriously the field of manufacture. During the past year Australia has encouraged the immigration of a number of Austrian Jews specially skilled in the technique of many of their hiost important industries. These men have brought -with them generations of knowledge, experience and equipment. Without exception, every manufacturer in New Zealand would benefit by the presence, say, of fifty of these industrial scientists, while our workers need not have the slightest fear of being replaced by them. Rather would a general increase of employment result. P. J. GOLDFINCH.