Factory Wheels Weave The Weft Of Prosperity

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 65, 9 December 1938, Page 28 (Supplement)

Factory Wheels Weave The Weft Of Prosperity

-New-Zealand Made: 55 Term OF Growing Significance

I'T has. long been customary to regard New Zealand as a country of pastures and farmland'', forest and mountains, and rivers and lakes, rather than of cities and factory chimneys. However, the latter is an equally important aspect of New Zealand. Hie, for more than half the population of these isles, is urban, and there are as many worker- engaged in industry as there are in tilling the land and herding the country’s flocks.

It is time the farmer looked with, sympathy and interest to learn what his fellow-countrymen in the cities are doing. They are producing almost all his material needs, other than the raw foodstuffs he himself extracts from the fertile soil. They make nearly all his clothing, footwear, confectionery, cigarettes, and so on, and their goods are every bit as good in quality and finish as those imported from abroad. In this article it is proposed to give some flight indication of the great significance of the term "New .Zealand-made,” and some few of the many reasons why New Zealanders should buy commodities so branded. Because, in the past, there has been an unfounded prejudice against such goods, and New Zealanders have showed too little appreciation of the great : part industry plays in national, economy. |. For, metaphorically, if primary industry lay s the 1 warp of the cloth' of prosperity-', then industry weaves • the weft.

: Livelihood for Many. I Ninety thousand New Zealanders tend the wheels 'of New Zealand’s secondary industries. Their £ 15,i 000,000 annual wage supports not only themselves, but • also their hundred thousand wives, children, dependents. The extra value added to the country’s produc- ■' tion by their endeavours is .£30,000,000 a year. What do they make? Everything. Everything : that can be better or more cheaply made here than overseas. Breakfast cereals, tinned and preserved meats, fruits, fish and vegetables, sugar, wine, and ale and cider, soft drinks and spirits, cheese .and butter and confectionery. Clothing of very desci iption. rugs and blankets, boots and shoes, hats and coats., bags and leather wares of many kinds. Trams, trains, omnibuses, motor-cars, ships and boats, machinery and metal goods', tinware and electrical appliances, rubber articles, bricks, tiles, insulators, cement and stonework, petrol pumps, and almost everything the engineer .can devise or the mechanic require. Woodwork and joinery’ foi every need, furniture, and even the house itself. Matches, stationery, shoe-polish, handbags, tents, tarpaulins, sails, tennis rackets, g’olf. balls and clubs, ammunition, first-aid requisites, disinfectants, biooms and brushes, paint and oil, artificial limbs, window-dis-play figures, newspapers and books, radio sets, soap, tobacco, cigarettes. Those are a few commodities that spring to mind at a moment’s thought. No doubt there are hundreds more.

Quality Goods And do they make them well ? Why, we have the best materials available to mankind fine timbei, straight from the forests, the world’s best wool, fresh fruit and. foodstuffs of all kinds, mines of valuable minerals. And we have in New Zealand craftsmen, oiven the training, who are every bit as efficient and skilful as the workers of England, Europe or America. We have the machinery, we have unlimited electric power, we possess every requisite of industry. It would be a matter for surprise and shame if the goods we made were any worse than those of other coun-ti-ies—but, fortunately, that is not the case. Already “New Zealand-made” is synonymous with quality. Already the baseless prejudice of early years has been eradicated. New Zealand-made articles compare more than favourably with those of any other manufacturing country. Why are they better made here than elsewhere? Their making provides a market for New Zealand raw m.-W-ials. employment for New Zealand workmen, reyv-ute' for the New Zealand Government, trade for Nev,' Zealand retailers, profit for New Zealand enterprise. Their making creates money that was not in existence .before, just as does agriculture or .the pastoral industry. The fact that primary produce is mostly

sold abroad, while factory products are for'the local market, barely affects the situation. Some factory products actually are for export. But the rest,'if they do not actually bring money into the countiy, at leasi save moiiey from going out to purchase similar goods from other lands.

But more than this, a great deal of the factory industry of the country is concerned with the processing of farm produce to tit it for shipment and for marketing. Such processing adds seven or eight million pounds yearly to the value of the output of our farms. Meat-freezing and preserving, dairy-factorying and cheesemaking are the biggest industries of all. Without them New Zealand’s overseas markets would look in vain to her for their supplies. A Balanced Economy

To improve the standards of living of the countiy, a more balanced economy will be necessary in the future, particularly with the increase in population necessary for the Dominion's full development. Il will serve, too, to lessen the effect of depression, always hardest on a country reliant entirely on a single market.

Today governments are aware of the importance of secondary industry. It was not always so. A century since, early settlers planning the country’s future looked down a verdant vista of pastures stocked with sheep and cattle, in a land without a factory chimney. But the factory chimneys came. They had to. They were slow in doing it. . For years. New Zealand, growing the finest wool in the world, bought shoddy blankets manufactured in the North of England from lesser wool mingled with cotton yarn. For years, although her warehouses and export stores were stacked with hides, her people went shod in English boots and shoes. It was a ridiculous situation. It meant that skilled craftsmen found small scope for their talents in the new country, that -the townsfolk were parasitic ori the country producers, that the nation’s wealth was only half exploited. Growth of Industry

Gradually industry was built up. . First the semiprimary industries, because they were essential to the marketing of meat and dairy produce. Then, one. by one, the lesser enterprises. Printing and publishing began early, for the dissemination of news is essential to any community, and the missionaries were agog to disseminate religipn too. Shipbuilding started early, for obvious reasons, and so did timbdr-milling, flourmilling, furniture-making, the building trade, and all the manufactures of most urgent importance to a growing country. But such industries as the woollen trade, the clothing and the bootmaking businesses, lagged badly, and had to be carefully fostered over thelir early years.

As is natural in a country where wages are high, and where first-quality raw materials fetch a fair price, it is not always easy for local manufacturers to compete on an open market with the mass-produced commodities of countries where cheap labour, is ruthlessly exploited. For this reason certain industries have been given reasonable protection. This does not signify

that these industries, are incapable of running econq? mically, or are not justifying their existence. In the world today, a country that is in advance ,of its fellows socially must face certain difficulties of this nature: Totalitarian countries, by regimenting their workmen and observing long factory hours at low wages, cap easily undercut the prices of a country where working conditions and living costs are high. How far New Zealand manufactures can compete on an open market is shown by the Dominion's growing exports of her goods. Biscuits and canned goods from the Dominion are in high demand in the Pacific Islands. Canned and pressed meats sell on the English market, against the produce of America and the rest of the Empire. Sausage-skins and casein are twd New Zealand exports in demand. Ale and stout, canned whitebait and toheroa, milled flax and cordage', refined sugar, dairying machinery, baby foods, condensed and dried milk, rennet, whale oil, smoked fish, woollen goods, are some of New Zealand’s manufac 1 tured exports. Her customers are the United Kingdom, the United States, the Pacific Islands, the East Indies, China, India, Japan, and Australia. It'will be noticed that the goods which are in. der mahd overseas are the Dominion’s own raw produce, processed and manufactured. Only in the case of sugar and rubber and metal goods has it been found to pay to make up imported materials to be re-exported. And in those cases the articles are ones which are iig any case being manufactured in large quantities to fill a local need, so that the extra cost of makingfurther supplies for export is comparatively slight,.; Times of - Depression - ■ ■’

The most serious difficulty which industry in New Zealand has had to face has been the periodic slumps, or years of economic depression, reflecting fluctuations in primary produce prices on the world markets. When a population loses its buying power it is difficult fpf industry to carry on, and the weaker factory busjr nesses go to the wall. Secondary industry is, however, the best barrier a country can erect against depression of trade; and the manufacture of essential articles keeps many hands from unemployment in times of stress. ‘

For the protection of industry the Government appoints a Minister of Industries and Commerce, whose department it is to foster and encourage factory production. He does so by the encouragement of new industries, and the extension of existing ones, wherever there appears to be a genuine need. He has carried out such researches as may further the progress of industry, solve technical or legislative difficulties, assist in raising the efficiency of producing and marketing New Zealand-made goods. He assembles and disseminates information as to modern methods, supplies of raw materials, and other matters of general or particular import. He seeks to prevent unfair or uneconomic practices. He encourages the sale and purchase of New Zealand goods, not only on the local market, but throughout the world. Important Industries

Among the more important factory industries today, meat-freezing and preserving takes priority. Its value of production is £17,000,000; it gives work to 8000 persons, and the value of the stock treated is £13,000,000 yearly. The butter, cheese and condensed and dried milk factories, their activities expanding yearly with the transition from sheep to dairy-farming, employ' 4000 men, and have an output of £18,000,000. Printing and publishing employs more than 8000 workers; the total value of its output is three million pounds yearly. The clothing trades employ' 9000, and have a similar output. Sawmilling, which, on value of production is on the same level, employs 6500. The motor industry has an output of £2,000,000, and employs 5500 workers. Lesser, but important, industries are. those of grainmilling, brewing, generating electricity, woollenmilling, boot and shoe-making, ham and bacon-curing, confectionery-making, fruit-preserving and jammaking, flax-milling, gas-making, engineering, agricultural implement-making, tanning, wool-scouring, furni-ture-making, and shipbuilding. There seems little doubt, that the future holds high prospects for industry' in New Zealand. Its expansion wjll henceforward be. more rapid than that of the farming and primary' industries, already fairly extensively . exploited. Development of both, however, must pto.ceedjiand in hand, as the population grows and gives ~w,ider, scope.for production, wider markets for New .-Zealand-made, commodities, . .