PACIFIC TROUBLES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 29 June 1927, Page 16

PACIFIC TROUBLES.

WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS. The existing unemployment anti financial depression an -New Zealand are large.y due to the fact .that an Cd'eat jbriiain mere are never less than a million and a half men out or work, and it is Great Britain that normally buys 90 per cent, of all the products of New Zealand, according to Da - . J. B. Condiiife, research .secretary of tiie, Institute of J’acilic Relations, whose headquarters are in Honolulu. l>r. Condlitte was formerly Professor ox Economics at Canterbury Co lege, Christchurch, New Zealand, and -is od ins way to New York, stopping a few days in San Francisco. Before his departure for San Francisco I>r. Conaiafte spoke briefly of conditions in New Zealand in an interview.

“There are possibilities of serious conflicts ahead of the Pacific,” he said, “and the tendency of Anglooaxons, both British and Americans, is to find possibilities for trouble only m other countries, not in their own box example, the greatest difficulty m China, according to the Chinese, is Great Britain; similarly, the greatest problem in the Pacific, in the minds oi a great many countries bordering on that ocean, is America.

“The number ot unemployed in New Zealand is comparatively smaJ, but unemployment is a pnenomenon ,so novei there that a great deal of attention is being paid to it. The problem of unemployment has not been serious in New Zealand for thirty years or more, and first began to manifest itself during the general slump in 1921. It must be realised that the people of New Zealand are ready to use State aid in an empirical way tor all kinds of probems. 'though the country i,s far from being socialist in spirit or sympathies.

“The Arbitration Court, which fixes the wage scale of workers, as one example of Government agencies being called in to aid the solution of what m more purely individualistic countries might still be regarded as a private question between capital and labour. The farming community is not directly represented on this court, and In names of falim n prices it is the farmers who receive the first impact of lower values before wages begin to go down. The result is that the farmers dispense with as much labour as they can, and the unemplovcd accumulate in the towns. “Wages are fixed by the Arbitration Court largely on the basis of the cost of living, and during any period of unemployment such as at present exists, criticism against the arbitration system naturally increases. “Unemployment in New Zealand is probably temporary and is largely due to losses in farming, particularly in dairying, which is the chief industry. “New Zealand is almost wholly dependent upon fhc export of surplus primary farm products. The great bulk of this surplus goes to British markets. so that an industrial depression in Great Britain always affects New Zcaland. , ' ,