MOCK PROSPERITY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 4 March 1929, Page 9

MOCK PROSPERITY

BORROWING TO PAY WAGES EX-MINISTER’S VIEWS -When the. track lo the pawn broker is permanently barred, the exporting industries, which have been made b,y tlie man on the, land, will have to pay. It is a hopeless helpless cry to say our only solution is lo get people on tlie land.” This decisive ulteranco was made by yi,. A. I). McLeod, ex-Minisler of Industries ami Commerce in the Coates Cabinet, when opening a lime works in the Wairarapa last. week', lie condemned vigorously the policy of paying wages out of borrowed money in order to gain relief from unemployed pressure. Mr McLeod said lie was in entire agreement with those who urged that there should be more settlement and also better. use made of much of the land already in occupation, lie could not, however, agree with those who today’ were saying that the only solution to unemployment was getting tlie people on the land. It was a helpless, hopeless cry at any time. This country not so many years back exported well over one-third of its total non-political products; today it was depending on pastoral products for practically all its (exports. This must inevitably lead to periodical depressions at times of a violent nature.

“ONE-lIORSE SHOW” “Although I know there are 'other reasons for our drift toward being an almost one-horse show, it is my honest opinion, as it is of a great many others, that the prime reason is the abuse that is being made of The Arbitration Court, said Mr McLeod. It the same conditions, etc., applied to the labour required in the pastoral industry as apply to other industries, a great deal of the at present farmed lands would go out of occupation. “Do not think for one moment that \ am a believer in low wages; all of you who know me personally know very different. My belief is that _it l isih wages' are to be permanently maintained every man receiving wages nuqst (.rive of the best .that is in him, studying bis employer’s interests as well as his own. Paying unemployed standard waves cm' unproductive works out 01 borrowed moneys is only- an expediency as everyone knows, and is always the first' resort of futile Governments.

ON BORROWED MONEY “Following the post-war slump of 1920-21 in Australia, the States either governed by. political Labour or still worse by those scarcely in agreement on any one policy but the retention of office, to gam temporary relief from unemployed pressure, started paying standard wages, out ot borrowed money, on public woiks, ■n dither essential nor interest-earning. What has been the net result. “An average interest rate, payable on all loans a few years back below tlie average in New Zealand, now about 10s per 'cent, above rural industries largely denuded of necessary labour; her one-time great mining industry in a state of collapse, and so-called unemployment worse than ever; wi i a political Labour hierarchy refusing to investigate root causes, and a considerable section of the population careless of what is done so long as a mock prosperity continues as a result ot extravagant borrowing. , “New Zealand, with all these evidences before her, lias apparently seo her political barque on tlie same course.”