OUR INDUSTRIES,

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1117, 3 May 1911, Page 4

OUR INDUSTRIES,

Is his address at Wanganui on Monday evening Me. W. Pryor, secretary of the New Zealand Employers' Federation, dealt with a subject which may soon turn into a very grave issue. After outlining the trend of the labour "movement" in this Mr. Pkyor said that the labour legislation of recent years had been a failure both from the employers' and from the employees' points of view, and added: "Notwithstanding New Zealand's long period of prosperity and high prices, manufactures were throttled. Business men wore prepared to sell their interests in many cases at considerable sacrifice. Worse than all, it seemed almost impossible to persuade those having money to put it into labour-employing concerns. He could quote authentic cases of this. Last session much heavier burdens were placed on those affected. A rest from labour legislation was needed, or period of depression would follow." This is a very serious statement, but it is one that nobody can rebut, for it is founded upon facts. Of course the fact that our manufacturing industries are languishing— and languishing in spite of groat prosperity, lavish borrowing, a high tariff and a mass of labour legislation recommended as ths finest sort of tonic for industry—is no new discovery. The principal witnesses to it are men against whom it is impossible to bring the charge of hostility to the Government that is responsible for the trouble. Only ths othor da-y Mr. Harold Beauchamp, the Chairman of Directors of the Bank of New Zealand, repeated that there was plenty of money for investment, and last year, on two occasions, he dwelt upon tho fact that although the money was available investors appeared to have lost confidence. The only reply to his observations that was issued on behalf of the Government was the inane suggestion that it was hardly decent for <hc investor to feel that way. Ths investor goes on feeling that way, however, and the Government neither savs nor docs anything to reassure him. On the contrary, it says and does the very things that aro calculated to intensify the investor's belief that he had better not trust his money in that field of investment which is the sport of aggressive Labour-Socialism. The At-torney-General has over and over again preached the gospel of a continuous progress towards Socialism. Mr. Treoeab, who knows the aspirations of the Government, which, indeed, he chiefly inspired in its labour legislation, has begun to excite the unions by pictures of revolution. How could it"be expected that the manufactures of the country would grow when the policy of the Government for years has been the reduction of profits and the multiplication' of harassing restrictions'? If the Government had deliberately set out to discourage' the investment of new capital in industry, it would have acted just as it has acted in fact. As Mr. George Booth, of Christchurch, showed some three years ago, when giving evidence before a Parliamentary Committee, the Arbitration Act has directly checked the growth of existing industries. But even moro than the existing- laws the people who have savings to invest have come to feel alarm at what tho future may bring forth. They sec employers harassed and attacked by the unions, they sec organised labour growing more aggressive and the Government more and nioro ready to truckle to its master, they hear Ministers openly preaching Socialism, they hear the Government's friends saying, when somebody takes his capital to another country, that the country is bettor without him and his capital. .What they never see or hear is the Government and its allies working for thv establishment of security for industrial investment. While exports only doubled between 1891 and 1909 (and the bulk of the exports are primary products), the imports have far more than doubled (and the bulk of these are manufactured goods that it is possible to make in this country). It is a crowning joke of the policy of capital-discouragement that millions arc to be borrowed to furnish a vast amount of horse-power for the industries that refuse to grow. It is indeed time there was a change in the administration of the country's affairs, a change that thoughtful people of all classes and all political views are beginning to bestir themselves to secure.