THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JUNE 23, 1902. THE RETROGRESS OF 1901.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11999, 23 June 1902, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JUNE 23, 1902. THE RETROGRESS OF 1901.

The Registrar-General lias issued advance sheets of the New Zealand Official Year Book covering the Customs and excise returns for 1901. These supply the chief statistical basis for estimating the material progress or retrogress of the colony. As such they can hardly be read with unqualified satisfaction. Indeed, they will increase in many quarters the gathering discontent with the methods of the Administration. It is not so much that they exhibit a heavy falling off in our exports, though that is serious enough and made more serious by the loan-inflated increase in our imports. We must expect that trade returns will show the effect of such staggering blows as have been inflicted by the "bears" upon the wool market, the export-value of which fell off a cool million sterling during the past statistical year. This for very much the same quantity in weight. But although a country which has a total export trade of barely thirteen millions must necessarily feel severely the dead loss which arises when", its leading article of export drops from a value of four and three-quarter millions sterling to one of. three million seven hundred thousand sterling, yet if New Zealand should ever have made that lost million good in other lines of trade it was in 1901. In gum arid flax prices fell and the output was reduced, making the colony another three hundred thousand pounds the poorer. But it was a successful year for mining in all its branches, meat prices held, agricultural produce was in demand, dairying had never been better. Everybody was at work—have we not this upon the official utterance of our Premier 1 —and there was an insatiable and profitable market for the produce of our industry. Yet with all this, the entire population of New Zealand were not able to overtake the million pounds loss inflicted upon us by the fall in wool. We exported in 1900, of our own products and manufactures, goods to the value of £13,055,000; in 1901, to the value of only £12,690,000; a falling off of over £360,000, the first time the tide has been against us since 1895.

There is no need to seek far to realise the immediate cause of this unpleasant falling off in our colonial revenues. The maladministration of the Government"is distinctly visible. The Government could not possibly have prevented the " bearing" of wool-values, but the Government could have ceased its unwarrantable interference with the due development and opening up of the country and thus have allowed our most promising industries to make good the deficit. In dairying, for instance, the amazing policy of Mr. Seddon has almost choked expansion. Nominally, the figures look pleasing and we shall certainly have Sir Joseph Ward quoting to us with seeming satisfaction the increase in butter and cheese exportation of from £970,000 to £1,120,000. But if we look back a single year we see that it was anticipated twelve months ago that by now the annual export of butter alone would reach a million sterling, being then close upon three-quarters of a million; and it was recognised that only the locking up of the land had prevented our butter trade reaching a million some years before. What do we find ? In spite of high prices and the presence of every possible inducement, our butter export only reached £882,000 last year. The Northern dairy lands are largely locked up, and where they have been opened farmers are usually cut away from the market by lack of railways and .deficiency even of metalled highways. We should now be exporting not less than two million pounds' worth of butter, at the lowest estimate, but under the present system it will be a decade before we approach that, even at present prices, while if prices fall we may never reach it. The outlook is serious, not because of falling prices or other possible depreciations, but because industry is interfered with, because the combined labour and capital of the community are not permitted to exert themselves in the most profitable manner. For the effect upon the butter trade is only one phase of the national losses resulting from the perverse attempt of the Seddon Administration to prevent the South Island from being outpaced by the North. The ultimate effect is inevitable. In 1900 we exported almost ; three millions sterling more than wq

imported. In 1901 our imports still rose in the face of falling exports— a rise partly elite to large importations of railway plant, explains the Year Bookso that the nominal balance in our favour was reduced by more than half. It is unpleasant, to be compelled to confess, even by inference, that in 1901 the colony of New Zealand did not pay its way, but this the RegistrarGeneral does for us. At any rate the difference in value between our exports and our imports was not enough to pay the interest on our public indebtedness, not to mention private transactions, a state of affairs which evidently cannot continue. Among the exporting centres, Lyttelton still retains the lead, the improved meat and grain trade having compensated it to within thirtythree thousand pounds for its losses through wool. It exported last year close upon two and a-half millions sterling. Wellington has been very hard hit, losing over four hundred thousand pounds as compared to Auckland's loss of one hundred and forty-five thousand and Dunedin's of only fourteen thousand. Is comment necessary 1 The North Island has practically netted the whole of the set-back. If 1901 had not been as prosperous as 1900 for our friends in the South Island and if the reason therefor had been an administrative one, we should long ago have had a change in the Cabinet. As things are, the South has regained its ancient commercial superiority over the North, exporting 52.76 per cent, of the total export of 1901. Of this Ave shall hear triumphant declamations during the approaching session, but it is evident that had the Government not blocked Northern settlement, the high prices and heavy yields of Southern agricultural produce could not have had any such effect. Wellington again stands second among the exporters, with £1,940,000, Auckland being a close and hopeful third with £1,920,000. In imports, Lyttelton is last of the four chief ports, with little over two million; as a matter of fact Canterbury swallows up the entire balance of trade. Wellington again leads the importers, with £3,046,000; Auckland second with £3,023,000 ; Dunedin third, eight hundred thousand pounds behind. These imports still come dominantly from the United Kingdom, the heavy percentage increase from the United States, so feelingly quoted by Mr. Seddon, being only upon a comparative small amount. The Premier might with equal truth have bewailed the increase of imports from the Argentine Republic, which increase is so enormous as to be inexpressible in the Arabic ; our Argentine imports rose during 1901 from nothing to seven pounds. Among the increases we notice the trade with Germany, now only fifteen hundred pounds short of two hundred thousand; much interest will attach to the corresponding item in; the next Year Book, merchants in Germany having protested that the insulting Pro-Boeris'm so widely displayed was seriously affecting their trade with British colonies. But we cannot . really place much dependence upon the details of these tabulations owing to the infinite confusion introduced by the factor of transshipment. When we read that only £330 went.to Cape Colony and only £56 to Natal we can appreciate the advertising value of direct servi'ces and estimate the profit which Sydney and Melbourne have been making by handling our produce.