"HOT-HOUSE PLANTS"

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 131, 30 November 1933, Page 15

"HOT-HOUSE PLANTS"

SECONDARY INDUSTRIES

FARMERS' UNION CRITICISM

Tho view that national labour and capital should be applied to our natural resources in directions where the result will be an asset to the community and a source of .industrial strength and not weakness, is expressed in. tho latest Farmers' Union bulletin.

"If a. secondary industry cannot stand on its own feet without a tariff, then, since obviously you cannot get something out of /nothing, ', some section of tho community, the consumers as a whole, are^being taxed to support it," says the bulletin. '.'Such" an industry is not a national asset; it is a runiting drain on our economic strength in a period'when it is essential to husband our resources to the utmost. We should aim to establish such industries as can pay their way, those that are natural to our circumstances, and exchange the surplus product^ of such industries for those products of mass industrial production that wo.need, and which cannot be produced here on a self-support-ing basis. "Our secondary industries have not shown the initiative that our farmers have done; while our farmers have searched and catered for world markets, our manufacturers havo kept their eyes fastened on our small local markets only. To assist them in catering for these markets, they havo cried out for, and* have obtained, more and.more protection, with the result thkt their industries have grown up as hot-house plants. Our manufacturers have failed to put a single line on to an 'expert basis,"