A False Distinction

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXI, Issue 3168, 22 June 1931, Page 2

A False Distinction

All Industries 2nterdcpendent

(Extracts from an address delivered by the . Hon. w. M. Hughes, exP/ime Minister of Australia).

AH industries that produce having- an exchange value stand upon an" equal footing. That industry that produces the most wealth with the least expenditure of labor force and the least wastage of capital is perhaps entitled to the most credit ; hut all industries are interdependent and complementary. The division of industries into primary and secondary is illogical and terminology is. to say the least, distinctly unfortunate. Hear Hear!"). Which is the primary industry, thai- of the man who grows the wheat o! that of tho man who makes he machinery with which he ploughs, harrows, mid garners the wheat? [f first things come first then thai indus rv is best entitled to rank as primary which supplies those engaged in others with the tools and implements with which they carry on their wink. To say the men who build the separator and the churn are engaged in secondary industries, while the men who use them are primary producers, is to wrest words from their obvio.is meaning. Tho question only has to he looked at closely and the distinctions drawn by these gentlemen are seen to be lost in a fog of words and a still greater fog of ideas. Ah Services are Essential The man on the land is doing i «reat service to the community. He is absolutely necessary to society ; without him it would be impossible for us to carry on. But men engaged in manufacture, transport and commerce are. also necessary, and the man on the land is dependent upon those engaged i?i so-called "secondary industries' 7 in a hundred ways. He must have fencing wire. machlnthe u«e of railways and lorries, and ships, and the services of men who contribute in various ways to make the wheat available in the shape of bread, to the consumer, in this country or in some other. The man n the land is just a link in the chain, neither more nor less necessary than any other Jink. He is only able to he on the land because other men are engaged in divers industries and avocations, and is entitled to no more credit for his services to the community than the man engaged in the so called "secondary industries." As 1 have said, talk about prim ray and secondary industries is not only shallow, but if is mischevious, if the acceptance of the term involves mi admission of inferiority for the one and superiority for the other. There are no primary and no secondary industries, in the sense that . lie is superior and more necessarv to the country than the other. Whether cue class of industry is more valuable or more profitable, if you measure things by the yard-stick of profit, than others depends upon circumstances. But one thing is certain. that broadly speaking, diversification cf industries is wise and profitable. A nation that devotes itself exclusively to agricultural and pastoral pursuits cannot hooe to progress very rapidly. For one thing it is, in these days, out of st"]> with the world. The great outstanding fact of modern life is the growth of cities. Everywhere the flow rf population is from the country towards the towns. The T/acto/ Supplants the Hoe The reason why people are in the city now-a-days is because machinery has revolutionised the world. 1 may repeat what 1 said when addressing this chamber earlier in the year: The man with the hoc typifies the older order ; the bent hack and hopeless look of subjection stood for a state of things in which unending and illpaid toil by tin" great majority of the population scarce sufficed to provide a meagre dietary for all. Man was then the slave of Nature; to-day he is its master. The man with the hoe has been replaced by the man with the tractor. In the place of the sickle and the scythe we have the reaper and the binder and the harvester. One man can do in a few hours what it would have taken many men days to do fifty years age;. Machinery, symbolising the ••secondary industries," has effected th's wonderful change. TJe HO//ie Market is the Best Tt is as well that we should realise that our lands will never he developed until profitable markets are wit.iin easy reach of the settler. And the best of all markets is the home market. The best. nay. the onlv way of inducing men to go on the land is to encourage the development of < ur manufacturers, and thus provide convenient, profitable, and ever-widening markets.