NON-PRODUCERS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 125, 23 November 1923, Page 6

NON-PRODUCERS

IS THERE AN EXCESSIVE

PROPORTION?

BURDEN OF THE FARMEB.

(II HIIORAPH.—SPECIAL TO TBI POST.)

AUCKLAND, This Day.

The suggestion that there is an exceg* Bive proportion of non-producers in New Zealand was made by the president of the Associated Chambers of Commerca (Mr. W. H. Hudson) at the annual conference. Having stated that New Zealand depended entirely upon the production of foodstuffs and raw materials fop her national income, Mr. Hudson said that by the last Census returns, classified substantially upon the same lines as in Britain, it would appear that in New Zealand, a young and essentially an agricultural community, we had less than one-eeventh of our population so engaged m our primary industries, upon which we were dependent for something like Ho per cent, of our national income. Our commercial population, in proportion to that engaged in production, was, in comparison with that of Britain, upon the same basis, two .and a half times -as numerous (i.e., 50 per cent, as against 20 per cent.), while our " professional " class was 73 per cent, larger than theirs (i.e., 4,32 as against 2.5). "In New Zealand the unoccupied or unclassified balance of population is 48 per cent, of the whole, as against 43 per cent, in Britain, well over ID per cent " said Mr. Hudson. " This includes children over ten years of age, wives and daughters of occupied persons (unless themselves wholly or partly unoccupied) thosa of independent means who follow no occupation, pensioners and superannuated individuals, pauperg and inmates of public institutions, and unemployed unskilled labour. It will be noted that in the classification mentioned we have already exceeded the Old Country, with all social disabilities attaching thereto to the possession of congested -population. ,

" Admittedly agricultural and pastoral industries absorb leas population than would be the case ftrith manufacturing ones, but discount these figures how you will, especially making du e allowance for those whose labour is complementary to that directly expended in production of our exportable surplus and equally essential, and the arresting fact remains that m a community such as ours (in which we claim there are no idle rich and pauperism should he unknown); but a fraction of our population produces the income of the remainder." ■ : Was it to be wondered at, asked Mr Hudson in conclusion, that the "primary producer was becoming restive under good conditions, and grasped any and ThZ P POPT IJ 8^ eh « Meat Wfc and Dairy Produce Export Control Acts however specious and economically unl sound, which might offer prospect of