Trade and Industry.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19451, 26 October 1928, Page 10

Trade and Industry.

Mr Shatter Weston has been so long President of the New Zealand Employers' Federation, and is the author of so many sound and wise pronouncements on trade and industry, that his annual address to the Federation is looked forward to by all sections of the public who observe and think. When it has been necessary to say that the outlook was not good, Mr Weston has said it, though not in a dismal despairing way, and now that he finds himself able to forecast "an era of " steady if not startling prosperity," his words gain weight from his past caution. There is the further fact also that he was speaking yesterday ten years (all but three weeks) after the fighting stopped in the Great War, and is not" the man to say carelessly that " most of the difficulties following upon " the War have been finally overcome." When Mr Weston says things like that, and especially when he tells us that the prosperity which is now slowly returning is based upon secure foundations, his remarks are distinctly heartening, whether we agree with everything else he says or do not. Many people will not agree with some of the things he has to say about the Industrial Conference, for example, which they will regard not as a "great achievement" but rather as a genuine and very earnest effort. At the same time nothing is more certain than that peace is essential to prosperity and that if the Conference did anything at all to encourage "mutual "co-operation between laboui, manage"ment, and capital" it will seem liko an achievement in a year or two. Peace, as Mr Weston says, is so much worth trying for that almost any sacrifice would be worth making to achieve it, and those even who do not think that it can be achieved by Arbitration Acts must be careful not to despair of it altogether. In any case, even if Mr Weston is more optimistic about the Industrial Conference than the facts justify, that does not weaken the foundations of his general optimism, which are (1) improved farming methods, (2) a gradually improving industrial organisation, (3) cheaper money, and (4) a generally industrious and thrifty population. Mr Weston asks for two more reasonably good seasons, with a continuance of the spirit of industry and thrift now increasingly shown all over the country, to bring us back to the comfortable financial conditions of 1913. Although some of our produce may not, two years hence, have escaped a world-wide fall in price, there is no reason, he thinks, why this should not have been more than counter-balanced, very much more, by. diligence and more intelligent methods of production. He is careful, however, to warn secondary producers, gently but quite clearly, that they must not expect much more assistance from the tariff. They have substantial tariff assistance now, and the best they can hope for in the future is, he tells them, "a definite determination by the New "Zealand public to use their produce "in preference to the imported " article." This means, of course, that prosperity will come to them only if

the article they produce is as good, value for value, as the imported article, and if they bestir themselves to advertise it and make it known. Finally, it is an encouraging rather than a discouraging fact that Mr Weston has no immediate hope of a very active land settlement policy. The Dominion needs more farmers, and more production, but anyone who says that he knows how to increase the number of settlers, immediately and rapidly, and yet quite safely, is either a humbug or a dangerous adventurer.