ARE WE PROGRESSING ?

Press, Volume LV, Issue 9989, 19 March 1898, Page 6

ARE WE PROGRESSING ?

Our afcly-conducted contemporary, the New Zealand Trade Review, does good work from time to time by analysing the trade returns of the colony, and noting the lessons to be drawn from the figures. In its issue of the 17th inst. it deals exhaustively with the colony's exports and imports, and the progress of its manufactures during the past eight years. The results arrived at ate in some respects startling, and will come as an unpleasant surprise to those who have been deluded iuto the belief that progressive legislation and progressive trade and production necessarily go hand in hand. We suppose most people will agree that a fair test by which to ascertain whether a country has prospered or not is to find out whether the value of its exports has increased. If so, we have to admit that New Zealand has actually gone back during the last eight years. Our contemporary excludes re-sxports and specie, so as to deal only with domestic produce, and it shows that whereas our total exports during the year ending 80ih September, 1890, the last year of the Atkinson administration, amounted to £9,641,032, they had fallen during the year ending 30th September, 1897, to £9,501,725. Our great pastoral lines —wool and sheepskins, frozen meat and dairy produce—all show an increase amounting in the aggregate to over a million; the value of shipments of "other produce," excluding those we have mentioned, has fallen from £4,046,182 to £2,897,764. From this total we may again eliminate the value of exports of the indigenous mineral products— gold and kauri gum—both of which show an increase. This reduces the balance of our exports to very modest dimensions, showing also a great fall-ing-oil since 1890. The value in that year was £2,912,126 ; in 1897 it had shrunk to £1,509,372.

This certainly does not look like progress. " But," it will be said, "surely i the local industries have largely increased, we are importing less and doing more to supply our own needs." Unfortunately the figures give a direct negative to all these suppositions. To begin with, our imports, notwithstanding the falling off in our exports, have increased by nearly two millions since 1890. On the other hand, the census statistics show that while between 1885 and-1890 there was a substantial expansion of our manufacturing industries, between 1890 and 1897 the increase was much lighter and only partial. In putting forward this statement it cannot be we are making a party use of tEe figures— the very same thing is authoritativelyafiirmed by the IJegistrar-General himself. In the 4 'Ne%_.eal__xl Yearbook " for 1897, p. 192, he states the increase- of ail manufactures for the two quinquennium, as follows :— Periods. Increase. 1885 to 1890 £2,062,458 1890 to 1895 ... ... £775,523 The Registrar-General then goes on to remark:—"lt will be found " that generally these increases are " yery satisfactory where the indus- " tries are such as meat freezing, " butter and cheese-making, sawing of " timber;- and others which depend " directly on work done by the lands " which are being developed; but in " regard to some of the smaller manu- " faoturing industries carried on in " the towns the development is not " always great, and in some cases " these have retrograded." The Review puts the matter in a very striking form. The meat-freezing, tanning, and butter and cheese industries showed an increase in the value of the products turned out of £1,420,078 between 1885-90, and only £748,836 between 1890-95. Excluding these we find that the increase \ .ol , all other maniafactures between 1890 and 1895 only amounted to £26,687! What a pitiful return for harassing employers, increasing taxation under the guise of protecting local industries, and all the other nostrums by which the Government tried to persuade us ths colony would be made to progress " by leaps and bounds l" _~,

It now becomes our paramount duty to enquire what is the cause of this deplorable state of stagnation? The Trade Review insists that one great reason is the burdensome nature of the taxation we are called on to bear. Our quasi-protectionist tariff has answered its immediate purpose of increasing the revenue, but it has not verified the hopes of the protectionists by enlarging the colony's output. An equally important factor in the situation, in our opinion, is that confidence has been thoroughly shaken by the empirical character of our Government, the policy of setting class against class and the mania for trying experiments without any definite knowledge of whither they are likely to lead. The vast sums of money lying in the banks on lilsposit and at call speak volumes as to the disinclination of the people to invest their savings in any labour-employing industry. Until their confidence is restored we sbail see little improvement in the wage-giving employments of the colony.