STAGNATION

Evening Post, Volume 50, Issue 50, 27 August 1926, Page 8

STAGNATION

DOMINION'S OUTPUT

COMPABISONS OF PEODTJCTION

PEB CAPITA,

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

DTJNEDIN, This Day

Iv a review of tho year at the annual meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, Mr. F. M. Shortt, retiring president, stated that tho most ominous fact in New Zealand industry was tho stagnation of output. With all the modern appliances and education we were producing per capita no more than 25 years ago.

Our best productive- year since the beginning of tho century was 1910-11. Taking that year's volume per head as represented by tho figure 1000, wo were told that in 1915-16 tho production had fallen to 980, and in 1920-21 it was down to 805. From this point it had risen again in 1923-24 to 945. "The general indication is that wo are not producing as much per head as we were fifteen years ago, and that from 1918 to 1922 the volume of production was astonishingly low."

Mr. Shortt added: "Quito possible the best thing that could happen this country is a period of falling prices, such as our fathers had to contend with in-the 'eighties. New Zealand has so many physical. advantages, so much in tho way of fine wholesome social conditions, that it would bo a thousand pities if we deluded ourselves into depending always on the chance of high prices in London, or developed tho spendthrift idea of raising a loan overseas whenever we were hard up. So far as pjjn. bo seen wo have come to the end of high prices in London."