ECONOMIC DIVERSITY

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 163, 5 April 1933, Page 8

ECONOMIC DIVERSITY

Elimination of Waste in Dominion’s Industry TEST OF EFFICIENCY Dominion Special Service. Palmerston North, April 4. The opinion that a greater variety of products and less dependence on the United Kingdom markets were two of the basic needs for the modification of the Dominion’s economic structure, was expressed by Mr. D. O. Williams, economist at Massey Agricultural College, when addressing the Palmerston North Rotary Club yesterday. “As far as external markets are concerned,” said Mr. Williams, “their proper survey and exploitation are obviously a necessary part of any scheme of national development, and our future may depend very much on the care and skill with which such exploitations are made. But I doubt very much whether they can be an agency of immediate help. The work og exploitation should go on ;it may take a decade or a generation before substantial results are achieved. Economic Primitivism. “We are, therefore, thrown back to a consideration of what can be done to improve our local market, by building up a greater variety of economic industries. If we believe that any secondary industry is good merely because it is local, and if we base our national policy on such age-old fallacies as that of keeping money in the country, we head straight for a Chinese tariff wall and economic primitivism. “The only contribution which any industry can make to national wealth lies in its efficiency. By the adoption of rationalism the efficiency of secondary industries can be improved; a voluntary rationalism if the industries can agree upon it, or an enforced rationalism if they can’t, '< If any secondary Industry can offer the nation a scheme of reorganisation, which has a reasonable chance of success, then we should be prepared to offer to it the local market in return, but the only possible condition for such help is improved efficiency. “I would go further than this and say that if any industry whatever has a plan for reorganisation, but cannot effect it because of individual quarrels within that industry, the plan must be forced on the industry by authority. In other words/ the time has come for the State, as guardian of its people, to deprive private enterprise of the right to operate inefficiently if an efficient alternative exists. “Face Realities Now.” “There is a good reason why we should face the realities now, for, barring some unsuspected miracle, a continued price collapse must compel us to national default. I am convinced that reconstruction cannot surely come until we have cleared away, not only the economic rubbish ofq the war, but the greater economic rubbish of peace. This may well involve a general revalorisation of our entire debt structure, as well as a revision of the concept of contract itself.

“This is no time for active acrimony or for organised struggles of class opinion,”:-, said Mr. Williams, ,> in < concluding his address; “Courage, frankness, ability, and magnanimity alone are the reliable virtues.”