OUR FUTURE—WHAT?

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1160, 22 June 1911, Page 8

OUR FUTURE—WHAT?

A PICTURE BY THE MINISTER. LARGELY COLKUR-DE-ROSE. l'ho llou. T. Mackenzie, the _ Minister for Agriculture, who, at the National Dairy Show at. I'almerston North on Tuesdav, delivered a reply !o tile recent speech "made by the chairman of directors of the Bank of New Zealand, spoke again on the subject yesterday morning. This time Mr. Mackenzie reverted to the subject when speaking before the National Dairy Conference. When oho considered the great industrial prosperity of the l : iiited Kingdom, said the Minister, it should, remove any fears for our output in the future. Regarding t)ie l'ea- of increased competition from'butter; and the .statement that wo suffered last year from Australian coinpetition, he stated that it was not serious, as the importation of butter into Great Britain for 1908 was ,£24,082,000, and for 1911'.£21,493,000—an increaso of about 3i per cent. In 1909 the imports of frozen mutton and lamb were .£7,800,000, ami in ll'll .69,800.000, which represented an increase of 30 per cent. The increaso. was largely in Australian mutton and lamb. If they were thinking of the trade of Australia,' : he would point out that in 1904 the Australian exportation to England was , 300,000 carcasses, and in 1910 this had .'readied- 4,250,000 carcasses, an increaso of. between 1400 and 15C0 per cent." And yet all that had goho into consumption at 'remunerative prices, so that if there was only''an increase of HI per .cent, in butter in two years, and an increase .of 30 per cent, of mutton and lamb in one year did-not depress prices, then, given'a .continuance of the industrial prosperity in the United Kingdom, and in tho absenco of abnormal occurrences, we. could not anticipate a depression. in jirices. _ Never in the. history of tho.world was there.such an enormous development in the trade of Great Britain. The .figures were JG1,.150,000,000' of trado in., twelve months. This assisted in the increase of the''purchasing power of the workingmen, ;.who consumed our products. A great • .deal of this was duo to tho increased manufacturing operations. So long as we could keep clear of contingencies we were safe as to _ tho future. lie believed in caution, and deplored anything that w;ould give an undue value to agricultural . lands. But he thought that me'n who occupied important positions should carefully weigh these i things before they give utterance to them. They should place before the public a reasonable statement of affairs, so that no embarrassments wotld arise in connection with financial operations that had been entered into, based upon present conditions, neither on the part of the country nor its industrial inhabitants.