THE New Zealand Harald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY. FEBRUARY 4. 1887.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 7863, 4 February 1887, Page 4

THE New Zealand Harald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY. FEBRUARY 4. 1887.

We lately referred in these columns to the interesting report of Mr. Kenric Murray, deputed by the London Chamber of Commerce to examine into the progress of the Commercial Museums now springing up on the European Continent. We observe from the pages of " The Colonies and India" (that widely-circulated journal of many years standing, which bears the same name as the late Exhibition), that the London Chamber of Commerce has been engaged "in an interchange of thought with the colonial element at this side of the equator," or, in other words, has been communicating with the Chambers of Commerce in Canada, the West Indies, and doubtless, the Indian Empire. And now south of the line, too, with those of the Australasian colonies. It has been suggested very properly that the operation of such bodies in the United Kingdom and in the colonies might lead to a better knowledge of their respective requirements and manufacturing capacities; and it is considered that the establishment of a commercial museum would be an appropriate sequel to the Colonial and Indian Exhibition held last year. We Tately laid before the reader the meaning and uses of such an institution, and Mr. Kenric Murray's full and detailed information about the one established in Brussels, as yet the most complete of the kind. It may fairly bo said that in the present era of keen competition, the Commercial Museum must become to the manufacturer an indispensable element of his success. It places constantly before his eyes the newest patterns of goods brought into the market, with the prices at the place of production, and samples of the raw materials which are used or could possibly be available for his industry. The thing is an institution of the period, and such means of information are therefore necessary to the manufaci turer or the merchant to enable him to keep abreast of rivals elsewhere. As it is certain to widely spread in foreign . trade centres, it ought also to exist, not only in the metropolis of the British Empire, but in other places which have any manufacturing importance both in the United Kingdom

and in the colonies. But while the " industries must be kept up to the mark and abreast of the latest improvements, it is a mistake now-a-days for even an old country, and a fatal mistake for a new one, to place undue reliance on a prospective export of manufactures. More and more countries are supplying themselves, and although the unknown parts of the globe are being everywhere pierced and opened, savages are but poor customers compared with the civilised. Half naked barbarians have not a great variety of artificial wants they may buy arms or baubles, rum and gunpowder, but they are not profitable patrons of the factory In a new land the local market can alone be depended on by the manufacturer, and the growth of the towns can have no security but in the development of the country. These colonies have been slow to learn the fact, and the plan hitherto practically acted on was to run up big towns and let the country lie waste. Circumstances were placidly allowed to bring about this state of things. They boast, or used lately to boast, in Melbourne of the immense population of their city, but in a colony with a million of people, that a single city should contain 360,000 of the number, ought certainly to be considered by any sane person a misfortune and danger. Cobbett, at the beginning of the century, called the monster growth of London " a wen on the neck of England," and he was quite right in the criticism ; but how still more disproportioned and artificial is the growth of the great Australian cities! They have of late taken the alarm in Melbourne; they have become apprehensive of the future. They know their huge city cannot feed upon itself ; that outer markets for its products are difficult or impossible to find, and so they are adopting measures, which ought to have been applied long ago, for the encouragement of rural settlement. How can we gauge all the evils which have been inflicted by the unnatural development in such young communities of city life rather than rural 1 Is not one of its social consequences the curse of larrikinism now experienced in every one of these colonies 1 It is a bad look-out, truly, when the vices and the vile manners of the midnight streets are so often found to taint the youth of the country, as well as the town ! And not only morals and physical health, but the industry and material progress of the population, are bound up with the needful economic reform — restoration of the natural

balance. The irrigation scheme which they I have now in hand in Melbourne is a j noble project, and will prove a power- i ful agent for increasing the number of husbandmen over the inland districts of the colony, and eventually for the settlement and peopling of the vast interior of the continent. It must have time, however, for the results to be experienced. Meanwhile they are giving great attention in Victoria to their wine and fruit industries. The Australian colonies, and still more so New Zealand, will always have a future for the export of their wool and frozen meat. From the day of its ; first shipment, in February, 1882, New Zealand mutton has held thq foremost place among the imports in the English market; and although anything like the price then realised — 7|d per lb—could not now be obtained in face of all the rivalry, we believe it is a matter of distribution and good management to ensure paying prices. The provincial centres could be as carefully worked as London; and we repeat that in Paris and other Continental places the trade could be started through the English residents. No doubt there is zealous competition. Even Manitoba, the youngest of the Canadian provinces,

has her Agricultural Society, and we are told that at the late Winnipeg Exhibition "some of the best grades of shorthorn cattle in the world were shown." They have to stall-feed their stock, however, much of the year, because of the polar winter. Dairy produce is another export for which New Zealand has fine prospects. The reader has seen that the steam communication is already giving us an opening for it in Brazil. We have long pointed out that regular steam communication with India would give a market there for our dairy produce, our orchard produce, liquid and solid, our frozen meat and other cool and refreshing articles of diet. So, too, with the coining settlements in tropical Australia. Yes, there will be always abundant markets abroad for the produce of our farms and fields. For the wrought commodities of cur towns we must mainly find the market in the rural population behind; and it is well that steps are being taken to call it up more ipmerously.