WHERE HAS NEW ZEALAND’S MONEY GONE?

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 110, 10 April 1931, Page 4

WHERE HAS NEW ZEALAND’S MONEY GONE?

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —-Unemployment is rife in the Dominion. Where has our money gone? About 30,000 unemployed. Where is the money? The reply is: It has gone to America. In ten years, from 1921 to 1930 inclusive, New Zealand sent to America the enormous sum of £44,686,809 more than America took from us. That is a colossal sum for a small population, such as we have. Year by year, our capital has been drained in this persistent and continuous flow to America. But £44,686,809 is not the whole amount. Millions of money have gone either to America, or to other foreign countries, in goods which came to Now Zealand through Australia or through foreign countries. Now what is the result of all this damnably fatuous policy? The reply is. our unemployment record, more taxation, and hard times generally. Had we not been such unmitigated fools during the last ten years, we could have got over the slump with infinitely greater ease, but our politicians whose everlasting talk is worse than many a pestilence have allowed New Zealand to drift, or rather to fall headlong, into its present position.

But still worse is the fact that our money has gone to America, largely for work which our own workmen could do, equally as well, if not better than American workmen have done it. Our workers and New Zealand employers have been betrayed, and we have them (workers) now tramping the

streets looking for jobs, which cannot be found. Pardon me, Mr Editor, if 1 have written with feeling, but there is little use in calling an ass by any other name, and the New Zealand authorities which have allowed this betrayal to continue deserve the name.—l am. ° tC ' WJI. THOMSON. 9th April, 1931. [I obtained the figures quoted, £44 686 809, which is the balance in favour 1 of America- —1921-1931—the other day front the Customs, Wellington TlieV are strictly accurate. Assume we kept £30,000,000 of that large sum in New Zealand, it would mean that 8000 men could be employed all the year round at £250 a year, and these men could be steadily employed during the whole of tlie ten years referred to. But our politicians seemed to believe that starvation is good for New Zealand workers and employers. —W.T.]