N.Z.’S ECONOMIC WELFARE

Evening Star, Issue 20591, 17 September 1930, Page 3

N.Z.’S ECONOMIC WELFARE

IMPORTANCE OF THE MAN OUTBACK GOVERNOR'S EXHORTATION [Pint United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, September 10. New Zealand’s economic welfare was dealt with by His Excellency the Gov-ernor-General (Lord Bledisloe) when speaking on the subject 1 Town and Country ’ at tho Rotary Club’s luncheon to-day. “1' am a convinced believer in Rotary,” said His Excellency. "It promotes social intercourse amongst busy men, takes them for once outside their occupational watertight compartments, and by broadening their outlook adds materially to their happiness and their value to the body politic. The subject of my address is prompted by tho New Zealand Shopping Week, so prudently organised in -Wellington, In tho present state of the country’s finances every prudent patriot _ should consider when he spends a shilling into whoso hands that shilling will ultimately pass. If it passes into a local factory which is normally affording good employment to his fellow-countrymen, or, failing that, into the factory.in any country like Great Britain to which New Zealand sells her own primary products, at least a penny of that shilling, periiaps a good deal more, will come back to the spender one way or another.

“No country’s economic! welfare, contentment, and happiness depends in these days solely upon its own domestic activities,” proceeded His Excellency, “ but at least wo can all add to tho country’s security ami our own prosperity and comfort by ‘ keeping our money circulating in tho family ’ ; primarily in the homo circle of New Zealand itself so far as one’s brother New Zealanders can supply one’s wants, and so far as they cannot do so then in families of Mother Britain and our Imperial cousins. If every Now Zealander doggedly made this his trade objective he would bo surprised at the rapidity with which tho clouds of depression now obscuring Die sun of industry and domestic comfort would pass away. Prudent Government finance is nob tho only road-to national prosperity. Self-help is at least as important. coupled with clear vision and a sense of relative values.

“ Regarding industrial activities,” continued Lord Blcdisloe, “ the greatest perils facing, this dominion in the future are, in the first place, too great a dependence upon the Government to undertake tasks which aro 'more appropriate for individual enterprise and the employment of individual capital, and in the second place the drift of population from the countryside into the towns. The former threatens to kill New Zealand’s personal initiative and sound industrial development; the latter to kill New Zealand herself. It is up to the townsman to remember that ins ultimate economic salvation lies not on his own urban doorstop, but in the fair green countryside where New Zealand’s butter, cheese, wool, meat, fruit, honey, (lax, and timber are being produced; and up in tho backblocks where tho conditions are hard aud life is strenuous, but where the vital spark-of the nation is still aglow and the spirit of tho sturdy, resourceful pioneer who laid tho foundations of her economic structure barely 100 .years ago is still determined and resourceful. There aro pessimists abroad to-day, evfen in this land of sunshine, smiles, and human efficiency. The pessimist who most heeds watching and rebutting is ho who scents national bankruptcy in world over-production of land products. Constituted as she is climatically aud humanly, if and when there is world over-production of land output, Now Zealand should he, and assuredly will be, one of the very last countries to go to the wall. ‘‘ Pessimism,” concluded His Excellency, “ is.said to bo tho handmaid of national decline. It warps energy and checks initiative. Confident anticipa tiou is indeed the life-blood of all industrial undertakings; but to non© is it more essential than to those of tho countryside, .as there is an inevitable ‘ lag ’ in the financial recoupment of capital and labour expended in agricultural enterprises. This sense of future security can. best be gratified by a consciousness of tho rapid improvement which modern science, intelligently applied, is effecting in farm practice.”