PRODUCTIVE WORK

Evening Post, Volume XCIX, Issue 92, 19 April 1920, Page 6

PRODUCTIVE WORK

At a time when so many of the Go\»ermneot's activities begin, and end, in, talk, it is pleasant to turn, to such an exception as is presented by swamp reclamation, concerning which the Minister, of Lands, Mr. Guthrie, shows that no less an area than 350,000 acres is now being operated upon by the Chief Drainage Engineer, Mr. J. B. Thompson: As a sample of publicity work, Mr. Guthrie is to .be congratulated on the motive that underlies his published statement on the subject. Where real constructive work is being done—and swamp drainage is one of the finest constructive and productive undertakings in the country —the public has a right to be informed, the Department has 1 a right to claim credit, and even the Minister shall 1 not be blamed for standing in the reflected glory to which he and his predecessona have established political tiUe. Unless there is effective publicity, the constructive departments of the Government fall short of the recognition which, to their work is due, and at the same time the education of the public in matters of positive interest is neglected. No doubt there are many Government activities that might be made a subject of instruction and of national pride, were it not for the neglect of publicity—a neglect that seems to be a peculiar characteristic of New Zealand Ministers. To say thatis not to say that Ministers are lacking in loquacity. They are'not. Ba* they seldom go to the public with statements that tell anything worth' while—they seldom punctuate their opinions and their", political platitudes with th« solid, information 1 that the country needs. At the present time, the knowledge that hundreds of thousands of acres are being won from watery wastes is of more value thai? tons of pious hopes concerning inflation and the cost of-living—hopes that persistently refuse to materialise into plans or to crystallise into actions.

Having extended to the Ministerial statement so much by way of credit, it remains to be said, by way of criticism, that the mere figures of afta do not visualise the progress in the way best likely to -captivate -the popular imagination. The oldest of the Government reclamations, Hauraki Plains, is dismissed with the information that the area affected is 90,000 acres. How much mo^e interesting the Minister would be. if he gave some up-to-date figures of the area of Hauraki Plains actually settled, some approximate estimate of the cost and the present value of the land, and some consE-qdent index of the addition mad© by swamp drainage to the, productive value of the .country. A simple balance-sheet of the country's operations on the Hauraki Plains should not be beyond tlfe competence of the Department ; and, with the .co-operation of other Departments that make valuations, record sales, etc., it should be possible to show in a general way, if not in a detailed way, the increment that has accrued since the reclaimed land left the Government's hands. No doubt increment in monetary value and increase in productive value are not synonymous; there is a margin of inflation arising from various frequently-discussed causes. But figures of sample sales, and of Government valuations, ■ would . nevertheless have real informative value, particularly if rein-forced with a few particulars of actual production on the settled sections. If one of the American States possessed an outstanding piece of reclamation, illustrating richly the advantages, of swamp drainage and the engineering and agri-cultural-eoonomic problems" arising, there, from, it would be featured in an aiTesting. State document, compiled from sources of information to which "the Stats alone has free access. . Unfortunately/the value of such publicity has not yet dawned on New Zealand Governments. Yet, as some-sort of a-n initial step, we" hail bald statements like that which has emanated from the Minister for Lands. '

It is a .matter of satisfaction that something further ia being done to secure better drainage plant. Apparently the tentative idea of using West Coast gold-mining dredges is not proving solid. In the matter of machinery importations the post-war disabilities are such that the proposed trip of the phief Drainage Engineer to America and Britain appears to be justified. When on the spot the Engineer should be better able to decide not only what he wants but what he can get within a reasonable time. And in land reclamation, by watering and un-watering, America has many lessons to teach. '" .

Mr. Massey's manifesto, by which he replied to the claims of the railwaymen, is thus commented -upon by the New Zealand Railway Review :—"Really it is not Mr. Masaey's, but a production of the tioad office of the Now Zealand Railways, which sought to put up what the Thorn* don branch of the A.S.B.S. aptly calls a smoke-screen between the railwaymen and the general public. Cannot every railwayman with, experience of the bloodless, arithmetical methods of the Railway Department, see in the statement of the Prime Minister the familiar hand which calculates how a sixpenny rise, spread over so many thousand men, over so many days in the 'year, totals out at some surprising number of thousand pounds sterling?—they still talk of sovereigns, though what the men get are dirty pieces uf fiofwf, nob worth half * re*l guttering good-is-gold sovareiga."