THE FUTURE OF PRODUCERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9823, 18 May 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE FUTURE OF PRODUCERS.

[b\- COLON OS.]

What is to become of people when there will be no market at all? Ib is a question not of this year or next perhaps. Bub ib is not to be classed with how will it bo when the coal works out, or when the sun fails for lack of meteoric dust, or asteroids, or other fuel, or when the earth cools down. The thought of these things may be grave, bub their incidence is so far off that we can hardly feel a shiver.

But the question of a limit to profit in production, if not exactly on us, is so near and so plainly coming, that wo are warranted in thinking of how it is to be when everybody will have attained his full capacity for production, and there will be nobody to purchase.

Of course an interchange to some extent must always bo. Some people will always want what others have, but any one can see that step by step the conditions of production in all countries are becoming gradually equalised, and that tho time is coming when nobody can count on making any profit out of his fellow-man by the sale of his products. The other day we read of a man in a neighbouring colony that offered the free gift of 1000 acres of ripe potatoes to the unemployed for tho digging of them. He did it because there would have been no profit in his sending them to market. It was urged that if the rate of carriage were reduced the crop could have been sold with profit, and the lowering of railway rates was stated to be the panacea for the evil. But. other people will reduce their railway freights and steamer rates, and the latter end will be the same as tho first.

We hear everywhere complaints of the fall in prices of production, and that if bhe existing state of things continue farming will not pay. But the existing state of things will continue with accelerating pace whether farming pay or not; and, discomforting Xhough the thought may bo, the competition of production over the whole surface of the earth only shows the prospect of prices going down, down, down to whatever at last may bo tho irreducible minimum.

We are told again that we musb train our producers to be scientific exports, and employ the most modern and improved implements and machinery if we aro to hold our own. But this is exactly what other people are saying; and, being as fully alive to the necessity, aro proceeding with their developments pari passu with ourselves.

If we take a rapid glance ab the last fifty years, we aro astounded at the pace with which tho world has been travelling on the track of production. At the beginning of that period one could almost counb on tho fingers of his one hand the places that were producing in a considerable way for export for the supply of distant consumers. And if we take a rapid glance over another fifty years to come, and think of the strenuous efforts every day increasing to expand production, we are puzzled to know where tho consumers will be found.

Within the memory of men the Western States of America, Manitoba and the Canadian North-west, the Argentine, and oven Australia have come forward toshow the vast wealth of their productiveness. India has awakened from its slumber and its teeming millions have become producers for export. The old countries havo been putting forth their productive strength as they never did before, while new countries have been opening up and filling with swarms from parent hires, because affording wider sphere for production. Africa has been partitioned, and will shortly attract to it large populations of industrious people, who will find there now fields for production. Asia is shaking itself up, and in the opening of China and the enterprise of Japan promises to present one of the most remarkable expansions of industrial and productive energy in the records of the world.

Nobody cat) have a word to say against production. Ib is the law of nature, and without it life would end. But the notable thing is that not one of theso countries contemplates merely the narrow limits of its own capacity for consumption, but everyone of them looks to the foreign market as its legitimate and indispensablo outlet, and without the foreign market—like ourselves in New Zealand -they think they must die. At present, the great streams of commerce in products, converge on London, and the English market is, for the time, the cynosure of the producers of tho world. "All the rivers flow into the sea," we are told, " and yeb the sea is not full." All the same, all the streams, whether the turbulent mountain torrent, or the slowly flowing river, find a common level there ; and England, as the great entrepot of the world's commerce, will only serve tho purpose of reducing all the productive enterprise of the nations to a common level.

But whatever temporary part England may play in finding consumers for tho productions of the world, she cannot increase the sum total of consumption, or create an equilibrium between producers and consumers when all the world is producing. All this supplies not one word of argument against our doing the very best that we can in the meantime to beat down opponents in the competition. Let us avail ourselves of all the advantages of science and ingenuity and experience. Let us bring down the cost of production and transport to the lowest. Let us be the first to exploit new markets, and serve them with our best. Those leading in the race may lead to the end, and enjoy the largest profits in the meantime. But all these things are merely palliatives, useful indeed and desirable, but incapable of preventing the inevitable end, which, if production goes on as ib is going now throughout the world, will be the closing of what is called the " foreign market" against everybody. Ingenious theorists affect to throw the blame of low prices, say of agricultural produce, on the appreciation of gold, because of its scarcity, and they say that if gold was more abundant, or silver reraonctised, or the currency inflated in some way, bigger profits would come to producers. Some of theso things might give a nominal increase of values, and make the producer feel be was richer by so many more pieces of gold. But if all the goldfields of the world quintupled their output, and gold became as common as lead, ib could not create a demand if production had arrived at the stage at which there was nobody in want of the surplus. Yeb this is the condition of things to which the present phenomenal growth of production throughout the world seems to be pointing. One by one every country in the world is struggling to increase its output of primary products for export, and everyone aeems to bo looking to somebody else "for his profits. The immediate result is the gradual but steady fall in the price of productions, and the ultimate outcome, though it may be remote, will be virtually that there may be no " foreign market" for primary products at all. Ib will be the throwing back of the individual on his own resources. At a public meeting in Auckland once, the speaker, urging the extension of small farmsteads, was asked from the audience, " But where is the market ?" He straightened himself up, laid his hand on the place where his waistcoat! and waistband join, and said, " There is the market."

And so it will be in the coming, even though ib be the distant time, when industrial activity will have reached its zenith, and the world's productiveness will have touched the limit of its capacity. Nobody will produce to sell, and everybody, selfcontained, will squab under his own figtree.

That such a condition of things is nob unendurable is shown in the fact that it is found even now in bhe remoter parts of America. There are hundreds of families living in comforb in the backwoods of Canada who are ehub in by the walls of the forest primeval, and are as undisturbed by the state of the market as if markets did nob exist.

They grow their own grain and vegetables in every variety; raise their own poultry, pigs, and mutton; produce their own eggs, milk, batter; brew their own

beers, make their own wines or other drinks, and even their own rye whisky ad libitum. They spin their own wool, weave their own webs, make their own clothes, tan their own skins or turn them into moccasins untwined, and they bring up stalwart sons and bonnie daughters, with every legitimate physical want supplied in'abundance and with the enjoyment of many of the luxuries and even refinements of life.

And what has been done once can be done again, and there is not another country under the blue dome of heaven in which nature has given more facilities to the primary producer for leading a self-con-.tained life than she has given to our own highly favoured New Zealand. Ib is true tho ideal is not within immediate attain 1 Tho country owes so much to the foreign creditor that millions of pounds worth of surplus produce must be sent him every year. And any man with a mortgage on his farm musb keep his feet on the treadmill.

Bub as prices for produce go down, down, down ; and they must continue to go down, as production expands throughout the world, it is the part of tho producer to keep pace with the fall, and become more and more self-contained in his resources and his expectations, and make himself less dependent on tho " foreign market," which is silently bub surely slipping away. Wo are right in taking of every opening in tho market of the world, and bringing every appliance within our reach to tight bhe battle there as long as we can ; wo may rejoice at everything that helps even temporarily to raise the prices of produce—a failure of crops in one country, a devastating plague in another, or a desolating war that may create a demand for wool, or tinned meats or flour, just as we might rejoice ab bhe burning of a ciby or the wreck of a flotilla as being good for trade. But we cannot close our eyes to what is meant by the steady downward trend of the prices of every article of produce, or foiget that in the equalisation of the conditions of production over the whole world, we see the shadow of tho advance of the time when thero will be no "foreign market" at all.