MORE PRODUCTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19405, 13 August 1926, Page 8

MORE PRODUCTION.

fairj-—With this phrase wo are ail by now acquainted. Upon the necessity of producing more we are ail agreed, hut I am hot at all sure that the implications inseparable from this slogan are generally apprehended by the urban population. Too often it is looked upon as just a matter for the farmer and as having only a remote reaction upon other sections of the community, that is to say, personally and individually at any rate. This attitude is fraught with the utmost danger to the whole community. Indeed, it seems to me that unless city folk come to realise how completely they are dependent, both individually and collectively, upon primary production wo are lost, it is no use preaching smooth things. If production of wool, meat, butter, etc., were to fail our whole economic fabric muse collapse, and though this is a hard saying for townspeople, all the "cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces" of this country's spreading cities would afford.no more security to the British investor than a bent sixpence j all' city incomes would dissolve like a mirage and their owners would be hard put to for their'next meal. Let us hope that this need not be experienced to be understood. Wo must have more production. This is only another way of saying "we must have more money to spend upon production." We cannot increase production any other way. Now in a country like New Zealand whose income is derived from agriculture cities are resultant, not causative, and in consequence expenditure in them is largely unfruitful. A civic square, concreted streets and roads, not to mention profligate expenditure upon persona), luxuries and dispensable things generally, all come under the one head of barren outlay when compared with a like disbursement upon primary production. The problem before us is how to transfer expenditure from town to country. Consider for a moment how prodigious an impetus could be given to production if all . tho money now so lightly spent on luxuries could, bo diverted to the land and spent in topdressing with superphosphate. Here is the one and only way by which production can be increased at. once. If farmers could have super on the farm at £4 per ton we could have all the increased production we talk of ancLmore this coming season. Suppose we aU think it over. '.V. J ; " Varon,