Hearths and Homes.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 859, 17 August 1888, Page 27

Hearths and Homes .

Thk New Zealand Industrial Association, its President, officers, and members may be cordially congratulated ou the success of their demonstration on Saturday night. So Bplendid and complete an exhibition of what New Zealand can do in the way of production and manufacture ; so numerous a gathering of genuine workers, and the general enthusiasm displayed, cannot but be beneficial to the cause of New Zealand industries. "We feel sure that many who attended the exhibition and banquet had very little previous idea how wide is the scope and how great the capacity of New Zealand’s industrial productiveness. These learned a useful lesson. And those visitors who may have fancied ia their distant homes that tbe population of Wellington consists mainly if not wholly of Civil servants, must have had their erroneous notions wholesomely corrected by being brought face to face with many hundreds of the unmistakably genuine workers engaged in the very industrial pursuits which it is the Association’s aim to encourage and foster.

That it is eminently desirable, other things being equal, to have the things we need for domestic use and consumption made among ourselves instead of purchasing them from persons outside the Colony will, we presume, scarcely be disputed by the most extreme Freetrader. It is clearly better that we should employ our own people to produce or make what we want than that we should employ and pay other persons in some distant country to do it for us. A rural settler with a large family of capable workers and not too much ready money available will assuredly get on far better if he and his family produce or manufacture the greater part of the household necessaries iasteadof diminishing their scanty store of cash by sending into town and buying these articles. No doubt the latter course is a great deal easier and in some respects pleasanter, but it is the man who adopts the former that proves the successful settler, and steadily plods his way to ultimate prosperity. It will perhaps be retorted by the ultra-Freetrader that this is a non sequitur, because there is a possibility that t,h.u hypothetical settler might ha/SQ. done better had he purchased, ail the household necessaries instead of making them and devoted the time and labour , which would have been expended on them to otherandmorelucrativepurposes. We frankly admit th& possibility. It is quite Qousoivable. For instance, a farms® wh,o neglected his cattle find strops in order to work at th.fi ©onptruptiqp of articles which he qould, buy in. town for a much smaller sum than he lost through his. neglect of his farm work would, obviously be committing a gross economic blunder. Similarly it would, be an act of folly to \yaste strength in trying to establish industries uusuited to the country or people, instead of utilising the same labour and capital in more remunerative directions. This may at once be freely conceded by the most ardent advocate of loqsl industries. It is plain that there are some industries which w® cannot reasonably expect to, establish in a new country with a small population and limited market;, industries in which the extensive divi sion of labour is a condition absolutely essential to success. But what we may call the lf natural ” course —that of “ doing things for ourselves”- —is so evidently the proper and sensible one, when it is practicable, that the burden of proof rests on those who -dony the practicableness of establishing the industry locally with profit. It is for those who assert that our hypothetical farmer should buy what he wants instead of making it at home to prove

Ithut he would be thb gainer by doing the former; that his sons could be more profitably employed in the field or the farm than in making chairs and tables and doors and window-sashes ; that his daughters’ labour could be more remuneratively utilised in the dairy than at the spinning wheel or the needle. Similarly, it is for those who argue in favour of importing what we use and wear, instead of making these things locally, to demonstrate that the local labour and capital could be used to greater profit in some other way. And it is here that the arguments of the professed Freetraders seem to us to fail as applied to New Zealand. They do not tell us how the large amount of available—and, indeed unemployed—labour is to be made useful if not in connection with manufacturing industries. It is idle to say that everybody should devote himself to the production of raw materials, such as wool, grain, &c., when there are already as many hands engaged in these ' industries as remunerative employment can be found for, and when the Colony already produces and exports more of these raw materials than can find a profitable market. When our exports fail to realise prices that recoup the producers, it is surely unwise to insist on producing more, and ou sending money out of the country to pay for imported articles which could be made on tbe spot. That New Zealand can ever export manufactures to a large extent is scarcely piobable in view of the fact that these Islands are more distant from the world’s great markets than is any other country on the face of the globe. But at least we ought to make the greater part of what we use ourselves, and if we can thus divert into the pockets of our own working classes a substantial share of the millions o£ pounds that we now send away annually to pay English and French and German workmen for doing what we could do for ourselves, we shall certainly be acting wisely, no matter what political theorists may say. For we as a community are in the position of the hypothetical farmer —we have not too much money afc command, and afc a time when the prices of our raw materials are low, and when, therefore, we cannot make much actual money, tbe more we can save by doing work at home instead of “ putting it out,” the sooner we are likely to, retrieve our position and recover prosperity.