Greymouth Evening Star. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1949. The “Slump Lie”

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 November 1949, Page 4

Greymouth Evening Star. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1949. The “Slump Lie”

’T’HE “slump lie,” as it has been described, has been so often nailed that the wonder is that anybody now has the temerity to repeat it. The story, on fairy book lines, is that the Government rescued New Zealand from the dungeon of depression into which the “wicked Tories” had cast it indhe early ’thirties. And jt is' on this claim that the Labour-Socialist party largely bases its appeal to the' electors. Of course, what it would have the people conveniently overlook is that' the Government was itself heading the country towards another economic disaster in 1938-39 —a disaster that was avoided only because war came and changed economic conditions overnight.

The official figures for farm income, export prices and factory production tell the true .story.' They show that the worst year of the depression was 1931-32 and that by 1935, 'when the Labour-Socialists became the Government, farm incomes had increased by 50 per cent., export prices by 40 per cent., and factory production by 30 per cent. In other words, -we were well on the way out of the depression before the present Government came to power. The true story in regard to unemployment is similar. In 1940, after five years of Labour-Socialist rule and after a year of war, the unemployment figure still stood at 18,761. The worst year of the depression was 1933, with 79,435 unemployed. This figure, it should be understood, included tens of thousands on “unemployment” jobs paid for by the Government of the day. By 1935, to continue the true story, the unefhployment figure had fallen to 60,344 —but in 1938, alter three years of Labour-Socialist rule, it was still 38,682. The truth is that the war and the boom in export prices produced by war, not Labour-Socialist policy, have reduced unemployment to negligible proportions at present. The truth is also that any Government, no matter how bad, could not have failed to “cure” unemployment in the past few years. As Mr F. Walsh, a Government supporter, has said, we have been living on the misfortunes of others —our British kith and ki n —who, because of Government policy in this country, have had no option but to pay record high prices for our food products. Our prosperity has always increased or waned as prices for our exports rise or fall.

It lias already been made adequately clear that the causes o£ the depression were beyond New Zealand s control. Mistakes were certainly made in the handling of the crisis—Governments, like human beings, learn from experience but it is a notable fact that under the Coalition Government “unemployment” pay and conditions of work werb far better and the wages “cut” was much less in this country than, in other parts of the British Empire, where Labour-Social-ist Governments were in power. New Zealand’s prosperity depends on Britain—for all practical purposes, our only customer. A Labour-Socialist Government was in power in Britain when the depression came in the early ’thirties and it was that depression which, in turn, produced the slump in New Zealand. A Labour-Socialist Government is again in office in Britain. History looks like repeating itself —Britain is again entering the throes of an economic crisis. It was a Conservative Government that pulled Britain out of the slump in the ’thirties. It was the Conservative Government hi Britain —and not the Labour-Socialist Government in New Zealand that also was primarily responsible for pulling New Zealand out of its slump in the ’thirties. A Conservative Government in Britain may be asked to perform the same task again in the early ’fifties —that is, of course, if we allow the present squandering of’our assets and opportunities to continue and our economic foundations thus to deteriorate in such a way as to make a slump inevitable.