Grey River Argus TUESDAY, August 13, 1935. THE RETURNING ENVOYS.

Grey River Argus, 13 August 1935, Page 4

Grey River Argus TUESDAY, August 13, 1935. THE RETURNING ENVOYS.

Now that the delegates of this and the neighbouring Dominion are returning from London, it will be of interest to learn if they have any plan to better the situation. They may be expected to speak as frequently as ever of the need for greater ovrsea trade, but if they hav e nothing- better for the future to offer than such talk, their mission will appear no more than a mistake. Mr Lyons, for instance, has spoken of the need for freer trade, but has been told this country buys from his in nearly the same proportion of three to one that he complains is the extent of Australian buying from the Dominion of Canada. Freer trade with Australia jus-: now might mean wheat importa lion that would stop New Zealand production. It might mean a market for New Zealand potatoes that would upset Tasmanian and Victorian growers. It might mean cheaper fruit here, and cheaper bacon there. But Aus tralia safeguards her developing secondary industries, and so must we. Wherefore, the talk can be discontinued, and Messrs Forbes and Coates asked if they have learned anything in the way of making the future of New Zea land less insecure and uncertain for a quarter of a million at least of its people than it looks to-day. They may be expected to say they have made it clear to the old country that this is not the time for immigration, and that New Zealand cannot hope to contemplate anything of the kind if threatened with any such obstacle to its development as a restriction of exports woul 1 mean. But it is about +ime that the political leaders both of Australia and New Zealand faced the question of how to develop their countries without such a disproportionate reliance upon outsiders. Th e Labour Movement has always stood for a greater degree of self reliance than the parties which represent the purely pro-fit-hunting philosophy. The lesson of that philosophy is that ultimately it produces not only a wealthy minority in the community, but a larger section whom that wealthy minority regard as merely surplus people. This is the explanation of the eagerness with which the Old Country politicians always sound those of th e Dominions as to when emigration from Britain will again become practicable on the large post-war scale. It is quite conceivable that were there entry to some new country with a prospect of better subsistence than there is for the unemployed here, they would be advisd to hike, not to camps or country jobs, but abroad. When the Labour Party propose devising some guarantee for all whose labour is devoted to wealth production for the community, the idea is to make the future of the whole community more secure than it is to-day. In America, while expedients like old age pensions and unemployment pay ar e being now adopted, there is also a plan to decentralise the population, and to end at the same time those abuses of nature, for which monopolists of land have been responsible. We need more secondary industries, but we also need to prevent a consequent congestion of population in urban communities. Otherwise, with a continued dis-

proportionate increase of town pouplation, it will b e a case of expecting to live by taking in each other’s washing. Railways that would have aided decentralisation have been dropped, and ther e also has been a retreat from the plan to subdivide big estates that was in vogue before the present regime began over a generation ago. That policy did place many on the land and did keep the population somewhat distributed, whereas evlpr since there has been an increasing concentration. Nothing, beyond the mortgage legislation, has been done to alter th e idea of farming purely for profit to that of farming more numerously for subsistence in the first instance. Insofar as there is any planning to be discerned in our mortgage-hol 1 policy, it is planning for servitude, rather than for liberty, as regards the landless majority. There once was admittedly a

great impulse of co-operation, whereas now bureaucracy has come in, and in the staple primary industries, expansion is not encouraged, but rather regulation of production. That regulation is termed a substitution of qual ity for quantity, whereas the encouragement for new producers of wealth is lacking. The State must give a lead, financially or otherwise. in establishing a greater variety of production, in. eluding that which will assure, the producer of subsistence. Too long has every other consideration been subverted to the money power, and there has been too little effort to forbid malpractices tending to the excessive and un just acquisition of wealth or to establish an equally national economy. The export business has been vaunted to as to overshadow the maldistribution of the proceeds of the nation’s industry. After all our export records, how many farmers are hard up! We have been often told greater economic diversity is essential, as a means of greater self-reliance, and the duty to lead is that of the State. A country thousands of miles away is mistaken for oiacentre of gravity, and the reason is that in ntaional development production for profit has been mistaken for the same thing as production for use.