INTERESTS LINKED

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 101, 23 January 1933, Page 10

INTERESTS LINKED

Town and Country Are Interdependent

GOVERNOR EMPHATIC

Dominion Special Service.

Napier, Jan. 21.

If the monetary medium of commodity exchange were plentiful and the law of supply and demand were allowed to operate freely there would be no appreciable over-production of food or the raw material of clothing, the Gover-nor-General, Lord Bledisloe, told his audience in the course of an address at the Napier Chamber of Commerce dinner this evening. “Whereas in some parts of the world wheat and coffee and eotton are being destroyed as unprofitable to the producer, and in others meat and wool have been drugs upon the market, onethird of the people of the world are half-starved or underclothed, and the other two-thirds are consuming substantially less than they were before the war," his Excellency said. “Eighteen months ago, when the world price of wheat was lower than it had been for 40 years, the price of wheat to more than 100,000,000 people in France, Germany and Italy was double the world price, and regulations were in force in those countries for stretching its use in the making of bread.

“If there were a plentiful supply of gold (or whatever might be the token or medium of world commodity exchange), and if in the absence of national tariffs, bounties land cartels, cheapness were allowed free play, local surpluses would flow naturally to where' there is a scarcity and would be bought freely with a plentiful currency.

Demand Has Not Increased.

“The extraordinary factor—particularly marked on the . Continent of Europe—is that with the fall in the open world market prices, the demand has not increased, as it inevitably would have done under normal conditions and universal freedom of trade. But for man-made impediments imposed in supposed national interests the cheapness of food would have increased its consumption and facilitated the absorption of the world’s output.

“Similarly there is said to be no actual" deficiency of the recognised medium of exchange—gold—but the aggregation of over 60 per cent, of what is normally employed in international exchange in the coffers of two nations in the'> world not . only reduces commodity values in terms of gold, but clogs the wheels of international exchange, and incidentally the equitable settlement of old-standing international obligations. “In the meantime, the old-fashioned clumsy system of barter of one commodity for another is being attempted in several countries, and bimetallism is being advocated in many quarters.

“International readjustment is pressing and inevitable unless economic adversity and a serious lowering of the general scale of living are to become normal instead of temporary world factors, and this needs to be recognised and acted upon at the forthcoming International Economic Conference.

Effect of Readjustment.

“Such readjustment should dispel from the mind of the efficient and alert primary producers, the bogey of overproduction and the fear of their occupation becoming permanently unprofitable. The main outcome of the socalled Economic Congress held at Genoa in 1927 was a recognition of‘the essential Interdependence of agriculture, industry, and commerce?

No doctrine of world-wide importance has been put forward in recent years which, to my mind, has carried more conviction emphasising

the views of ail the nations represented at that congress than that of ’ the essential interdependence .of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce—the inevitable and vital identity of interest between town and country.

“Just as the gross demand for land products in Britain and other great industrial countries is dependent upon good trade among the industrial population—i.e., upon the free exchange of manufactured commodities—so conversely the gross demand for factory output is conditioned largely by the economic prosperity and purchasing power of the world’s rural population, which far exceeds that of its industrial inhabitants. “Just, as co-operation and market organisation have become vital conditions of agricultural and pastoral production, so also rationalisation, and with it the material reduction of overhead costs, have become vital factors in the sound and profitable conduct, of manufacturing enterprise and in •'he process of lowering restrictive fiscal barriers. Productive competition makes for progress and enlightenment and puts a discount-upon mediocrity, reaction and stagnation in methods of production. Careful Attention and Research. “This necessitates careful attention to the teachings of science and research as soon as their commercial value is clearly demonstrated. It' involves organised effort for supplying overseas customers with products of consistent high quality and' uniform description and meticulous care in studying their exact requirements. f “So great is the variety of soil and climate, and so abundant,is the sunshine in this nature-favoured country, that there should be almost endless scope when normal world conditions return for its primary producers to meet all the requirements of the British market from time to time, and to supply commodities which would leave some profit to the producers, if not in one direction, then in another.”