"TEMPORARY AND INSECURE"

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 61, 9 September 1937, Page 10

"TEMPORARY AND INSECURE"

! • (By Telegraph.) (Special to the "Evening Post.") DUNEDIN, This Day. Commenting on the Arbitration Court's pronouncement regarding standard wages, the "Otago - Daily Times" says: "Some of the considerations to which attention is directed in the pronouncement by a majority of the Court would seem to express specially the -views of the presiding Judge. The Court take.; a roseate view of the future. .'Wool prices,1 it says, 'should be maintained, if not further increased; butter prices are firm and the output is increasing; the outlook for meat is good,' and so on. It is to be hoped the anticipations thus confidently expressed will be realised. Clearly, however, they enter the realm of the speculative. In Britain, the Court asserts, there is increased prosperity, and this cannot fail to react favourably in this country. Since Britain is the market for the bulk of exports from New Zealand her prosperity is necessarily reflected in the Dominion, and it is to this, and to the expansion in volume and value of shipments of primary produce from this country, that the economic improve•ment which is noticeable here is to be ascribed. To tht extent, however, to which the increased prosperity in Britain is Jue to and dependent upon the prosecution by the Government of its re-armament progiamme, the demand for products of the Dominion must pro canto be affected in this respect. Therefore, the basis upon which the Court has arrived a* its pronouncement is temporary and insecure."