NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 62, 6 December 1930, Page 8

NOTES OF THE DAY

Primary and secondary industries and business interests are to be represented at a conference in Wellington next week to consider the economic position of the Dominion, It is most regrettable that the conference could not have been made a national one at which all interests would be represented. As it is there will be no representatives of the Government, local bodies or labour and for these large gaps at the conference table the Government must be held responsible. If it realised the gravity of the present situation or, rather, if it were prepared to face the facts, it would have taken the lead in this matter. All hands should be called on deck to meet the existing emergency and to outface it by united action. Far from rallying the forces of the country to a great co-operative effort, the Government has remained supine, drifting with the stream. Such a lack of initiative and executive power, such slackness, may yet cost the country dear unless the Administration can be galvanised into action.

It is the nervelessness of the present Government, its failure to grapple with the present difficult situation, that is inclining more and more people to favour a coalition Government. Mr. W. Goodfellow is the latest to advocate fusion because he feels that the times make a strong Government a vital need. Taxes are a heavy and inelastic charge on the over-burdened farmer but, as Mr. Goodfellow remarks, “only a strong Government can reduce expenses.” Not only taxes but the whole of the productive costs of the primary producer must be lowered if he is to be enabled to compete in world markets at present prices and survive.. Once again, only a strong 1 Government can take the comprehensive action essential to make this reduction effective. Moreover . the problem must be attacked from the national standpoint to the exclusion of sectional and factional interests, of vote-catching considerations and other political sideissues. That will be the best way to reach a solution that is complete enough to meet the case.

Adjustment of costs to reduced income is the great national problem of to-day. A good deal has been heard in recent weeks of how maladjustment is affecting the primary producers but less of how it hits the working men. In the latter case the incidence is unequal. So far the majority have got on as well as or better than before because of the decrease in the cost of living; the minority who suffer are those out of work. The steady increase in this minority until to-day there are 8038 registered unemployed is a symptom of the lack of adjustment between the price of labour and what labour will produce. In short, wages are too high, it does not pay to employ more men than a bare minimum and, as the margin is reduced, so do the unemployed multiply. How severe this problem of unemployment is going to become depends mainly on the workers. So long as they insist, or their leaders insist, on clinging to an artificial standard of wages, for so long will the number out of work tend to increase, especially as the disparity between the price and the value of labour widens.

Exit for the workers from the blind alley in which they find themselves is impeded by restrictions imposed by the Arbitration Court. The distress in Foxton is a case in point. In the town there are a large number of flaxworkers unemployed. The industry cannot afford at present prices for hemp to pay the award rate of wages and the men, recognising the logic of the argument, are willing to agree to a temporary suspension of the award involving lower wages. It would seem reasonable that a mutual agreement such as this should be allowed but that is not the law. The Arbitration Court must ratify any variation of the award and the Manawatu Flax workers’ Union will not invite such intervention. The upshot is that the men cannot be engaged, a national industry is idle, and distress in Foxton has to be relieved from the community chest. In the name of common sense how can so sterile a condition be justified? A way out from the impasse could be found at once if the Government would do as it has been requested to do, empower the Arbitration Court to vary awards by general order. But the Government has shirked the issue and has thus provided another reason for the formation of a strong Administration that will face the facts.