WILL SPRING ENDURE?

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 32, 8 February 1929, Page 8

WILL SPRING ENDURE?

With export prices "pretty high" (to uso a phraso of tho Minister of Industries and Coinmorco), and with a goneral participation of tho country's products in theso satisfactory pricos, tho New Zealand farmer has a better outlook than for somo years past. But it rests with himself whether ho shall tako full advantage of tho now situation. Higher prices for what' ho soils could bo neutralised by higher prices for what ho buys—and tho samo Minister sounds a note- of warning againat the speculative prices- being paid, in a good grass yoar, for store stock—and also by a failure to cut costs and to bring tho price of land more in line with reality. Tho prosont upward curve in prices shoultl not constituto a reprieve for uneconomic systems or an oxcuse for fresh inflation. According to the Chairman of the Now Zoaland Refrigerating Company, although in recent years some of the smaller freezing crimpanies have been eliminated, there are still too many freezing works in Now Zealand. If so, thoy are a continuing tax on the national resources and on the new-born prosperity. Tho benefit of improved, export pricos may be lost not only by costly methods of production, but, as has been lately emphasised, by fall in quality of product. The good prices should be hailed by primary industry as encouragement —moral and material—to carry on with greater vigour the attempt to put the house in order. A now Cabinet is lucky when signs of an economic springtime attend its birth. It would be a wise Cabinet that would, by the precept and practice of prudence, turn a promising spring into a productive summer.