FACTORY RECORDS

Evening Star, Issue 19276, 15 June 1926, Page 4

FACTORY RECORDS

LAST YEAR’S PRODUCT NEARLY £84,080.000 [From Our Parliamentary Retobier] WELLINGTON, Juno 14. Tbo secondary industries ol the dominion are making good progress. Their product last year, according to tbo official figures collected by the Government Statistician, amounted to nearly eightyfour millions sterling, and they paid in bill was £1,420,QU0 in excess of the previous vear, and the average wage paid to male employees wont up 6 per cent, during the period, though tbo average female wage showed a slight decrease. The productive employees in secondary industries, as distinct from those_ employed on the administrative and distributive side, number 67,945, an increase of 3,815, half of which is duo to the inclusion for the first time of the traffic employees of electric tramways. The” cost of the material operated on m the factories totalled over fifty-two millions, and it is noticeable that mechanical power is coming more into factory operations in Now Zealand. The increased horse-power last year was 37,495, making a total power of 238,406. The handicap to factory_ industry of the lack of cheap power is fast disappearing from New Zealand with the development of hydro-electric resources; therefore, it is not surprising that electric power accounted for over'one-third of the increase with 13.946 horse-power, while steam showed an increase of 12,953, water power 11,092, oil 839. Power used by New Zealand factories has increased by 97 per cent, in nine years, and the average horse-power per productive worker has shown a rise trom 0.8 horse-power in 1900 to live times that figure to-day. Owing to fluctuations in value of commodities it is difficult to make fair comparisons between the outputs per employee at various periods, but the Statistician, with this qualification, assesses the value of the output per £IOO of wages, showing that in 1900 it amounted to £541; that during the peak of high prices in 1916 it rose to £683; and that last year it was £620. DEVELOPING INDUSTRIES. Examining the details of increases in the numbers of employees, the Government Statistician states that printing, with 908, and saw-milling 430, showed tbo largest additions, the balance being evenly custributed between biscuits and confectionery (74), meat freezing (215), brick, tile, and pottery (38), concrete block making (88), motor and cycle engineering (299), furniture making (123), lax-milling (274 L Flax-milling had (says the report) recovered from its depression, the total number of employees (1,228) being larger than at any of the three preceding periods. In several cases decreases in the number of productive employees were noted, the principal industries suffering in that respect being clothing, gas making, and woollen milling. A considerable quantity of low grade and cheap clothing was imported during the year ended March, 1925, which caused a period of depression in the woollen-milling and clothing trades. The growing use of electricity has. no doubt, been responsible for the falling away of the gas manufacturing industry. . . '■

Summing up the position in regard to the employees of our secondary industries, the report states that last year was a record, even exceeding the boom times of 1920.