The Grey River Argus THURSDAY, August 12, 1937. N.Z. AND U.S.A.

Grey River Argus, 12 August 1937, Page 8

The Grey River Argus THURSDAY, August 12, 1937. N.Z. AND U.S.A.

This country tends toward closer touch \vitli the United States on account of its economic as well as its geographical situation. The Cabinet Ministers, Messrs Nash and Armstrong, after visiting that country, should bring with them some information of interest regarding the possibilities of increased trade. Mr. Nash was reported to have been very busy on the subject during his stay, while the Minister of Labour, now at Washington, is studying industrial as well as commercial developments, and suggests our primary products afford scope to begin an era- of trading reciprocity. Mr. Armstrong compares American methods of handling . industrial disputes very unfavourably with our own. In this he is doubtless justified, but the question is whether a comparison is exactly fair. We have had one great advantage in the matter of industrial legislation. ' Modern industrialism is here relatively undeveloped, whereas the United States has taken second place only to Britain in its promotion, and has blundered equally in the process- !

New Zealand lias been, able not only to learn from mistakes elsewhere, but to apply remedial legislation long before industrial capitalism has fashioned the populace into a mould which it will take generations to break, providing that the damage does not prove ultimately irremediable. The slogan of up-to-date-ness has for seven generations led older into a worship of science as applied to industry without any question of whether it could possibly lead men astray. To-day, the worker, at least, knows that he has been enslaved to machinery. America for three centuries pinned faith in economic liberalism, and its agriculture has been wastefully developed. One reason has been too deep and too precipitate a plunge into industrialism. America’s manufactures, and its exploitation of mineral wealth and oil-fields, have been now carried further than those of any other race. .More goods arc produced than can be used, while prosperity has been frittered away. Destructive methods of cultivation threaten,' indeed, in the course of another half century, unless radically altered, to change the whole central region between the Rocky and the Alleghany Mountains into a. Sahara desert. This prospect certainly does indicate that New Zealand primary products might soon find a market there, in return for some of the manufactures Americans produce in excess. At the moment there is the question of an air service between the United States and the Dominion, whose Government is evidently stipulating that Pan American Airways shall share with Imperial Airways the passenger traffic. Evidently the previous Government did not envisage the entry of the British Company into, the traffic while making an agreement with the American Company, which now is sending an envoy here to try and retrieve as much as possible of the original terms as were favourable for itself. There is one point about the United States which may not have claimed the attention of Dominion Ministers, but which is of interest. The population may be classified into three parts One third inhabits cities l of more than fifty thousand people, and another third the countryside and small places of fewer * than two thousand five hundred inhabitants, while the remaining third is located in towns of between fifty thousand and two thousand five hundred people. The old Puritan ideas are still those of the great majority outside of the larger towns, blit of that third of the population, in towns above 50,000 populatjm, those ideas are retained by only a very small minority. On the other hand, the latter centres are where the effects of modern industrialism are seen in the minds of a majority, a reaction, not against the industrial system so much as against the insecurity it means for so many. The old political traditions are also opposed, whereas they yet hold sway on the two-thirds of the populace who live either in towns below the 50,000 population level or especially in the smaller or more scattered communities. 'What the latter may yet have in their favour is that many of them remain disposed to live more natural lives, to take a long view, and to regard new inventions, and the slogan of up-to-dateness in the light of ill-effects already resulting therefrom. Thus, while there is room for trading relations, as Americans are not so enamoured as they were of tariff barriers, New Zealand, as remarked by Mr. Armstrong, can teach the American as well as learn from him.