ELECTRIC POWER

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 10, 13 January 1932, Page 11

ELECTRIC POWER

TO RESTORE INDUSTRY

CHANCELLOR'S SUGGESTION

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.") DUNEDIN, This Day. The suggestion that in the industrial .sphere-.:electricity is destined to be the restorer, as the. utilisation of steam power was in the last century, was made by the Chancellor of the Unr. .r----sity of New Zealand, Professor J. Macmillan Brown, during tho course of his address to the Senate, sitting in Dunedin to-day. "A renewal of the powers is most needed after a long period of defertilisation of our resources, especially where those resources are pastoral or agricultural," he said. "Where they are industrial, a new machine or a modification of: tho old machines or a new power or new application of the former power may set an exhausted or outclassed industry on a new. career, of prosperity.

"Last century'the application of the new steam power ultimately restored to Britain all the capital she had lost through supporting the Allies against and -lending thorn the funds wherewith they could continue the struggle to its victorious end, and all th j markets that France had taken f roih. her. And now that she is again povertystricken through fighting, especially at sen,.a long war, and acting the pursebearer, for all the Allies, the: electric power discovered by her own scientist again, the world-famed Faraday, is about to begin the restoration of her prosperity and power. Nor is she in as sorry a plight as she was in a century ago; then she had lost her colonies over the Atlantic; now she has an Empire overseas such: as the world has uever seen before, as varied in its climates and- undeveloped resources -as our earth is capable of putting into the hands of: one management. TM3 empire sne. is about to -organise and develop into. a ;source. of wealth and a market such as human history has never witr nessed, and stretching into every sea and ocean on our globe. . •- . ." "We in New.Zealand at the edge of the world seenito be one of the least significant, units An.. the: organisation. But with our/mountains ;iand lakes; we have water power to: develop with which no other .-country in .the world except Norway;, and Switzerland eari compare. And- at this juncture in the affairs of the world, our distance from other markets has been reduced to a neglir gible amount by, the conquest of the air as well as of the sea. .: But' our industrial age in.; its fullest development lies still in; the future; Our immediatel' contribution to the greatness of this: imperial organism that is about to, function lies -still in the pastoral - and; agricultural.- stage. Arid when; the " financial,'- outlbplc begins to iniprovo:. .so fair:: as-: to:; impress the ordinary-.pessimistic observer, -there is no chance of such a boom in prosperity as follows the • introduction of, a new power, or a.iew .machine/in the indus: trial : wprlfl.: 1 If:pric'csVfor;our produce in : ,the Eiuro.pean markets\do not go up to what they,were before the war, we shall have'reither to" reduce the cost of raising them or. increase the amount raised, at much the same cost. And the only-way to do this is' to: use fertilisers wisely.- On'that,way/our. dairy farmers haYS; entered, espeeiitliy in":the North Island, and by the help of research at our two Agricultural Colleges will learn to follow out more' profitably" without reducing the standard of living of the workers."

The Chancellor suggested that more, might be done .in-the:way of fertilising' pastures' to iniprbvo the wool, adding that 'the. Coalition Government evidently- 'realised this wheYi'ti£6y subsi-dfsbd-fertilisers so as to 5 induce!farniors and pastoralists to bo...more, liberal in their applicatibri. • He'%xpressed the hope/that- tie Goyernm€ntj" too," would see. thafc'it: was necessary-to fertilise tho:;brains-. of'• the commiinify, so that' talent .iaould'bo, developed^biyd used in the solution .of the country?s probloins;