“DISTINCTLY GLOOMY."

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7356, 7 February 1911, Page 4

“DISTINCTLY GLOOMY."

Mr H. Braddon, of the firm of Daigety and Company, read to the Science Congress at Sydney a paper in derision of our industrial laws, which merely shows thafthe function of the Science Congress can be perverted at a touch by any sufficiently influential person,-the fact being, of course, that Mr Braddon is in no sense a scientist. He is a shrewd exploiter of business possibilities; and be is a generous hater of democracy, because democracy has set that exploitation round with certain safeguards. Therefore he is lavish of unconvincing generalities. He says, for instance, that the relations between employers and employed are distinctly less happy than they were twenty years ago. To any sane man who remembers things as they were twenty years ago it will be plain enough that that statement is preposterous. Possibly certain employers are not so happy as they were twenty years ago, because in tbe interval they have been compelled to pay reasonable wages and provide reasonable conditions oi work. When Mr Braddon talks of employers being helpless, because of tbe capital looked up in their businesses,, he is surely fax too ready to aesume the stupidfty of his audience. A man does not continue a losing business merely because he has capital locked up in it. By doing so he would inevitably lose whatever capital he happened to have left. Employers of labour all over Australasia continue to employ labour foi one reason, and for one reason only: because it pays. There is no needless philanthropy and altruism about people who pay wages. When Mr Braddon telh his Australian audience that the outlook in New Zealand is " distinctly gloomy." he simply pays his audience the compliment of assuming that it has dull eyeand little wit. New ‘Zealand was never more prosperous than it is to-day; and the outlook was never more encouraging. It is perfectly plain that the scientific method is not the method of Mr H. Braddon. The fact is that the mistakes now be-

ing made in New Zealand ore not being made so much by parties as by persons. There is, for instance, the dairy industry. It is never possible to foretell how auv given group of shareholders will behave on any given occasion; but i'n all human probability various directors of dairy companies will have a bad time at their next annual meetings. Early in the season they refused offers of London buyers of butter at from to 11 Jd f.o!b. If present cable advices prove anything at all they prove that the factories concerned will get fully a penny loss for their butter than they could have had by closing with tho earlier, offer. There is a lesson tltat directors of dairy companies have yet to learn; the useful lesson that business is seldom carried on successfully by consigning goods for a port thousands of miles away to persons not directly interested in the sale of them. In these times of keen and driving competition, deals representing Mg money can only be safely carried through by men trained in the handling of responsible undertakings. Men living ou farms in out-distriots, however intelligent and careful they may be, can uot possibly understand the delicate ins and outs of the world's butter trade. It is their business to understand tho management of cows and farms, and that they do well. Tho handling of butter on the great London market is an altogether diffeient business. 1 Experience must teach them, and they’re likely to pay dearly enough for their experience this year. Still, if experience does at length teach, the experience will be worth while. For the past four years a certain chain of cheese factories in Now Zealand have been offered fully £2 a ton more for their cheese, early in each season, than they eventually realised. Tho loss thus shown amounts ,to about. JtGfJDU a year, or Jt24-,ool> in the four years. This is a considerable loss, even when it is spread over a prosperous - district; but it is chiefly deplorable because it is so unnecessary', and because it gives to critics like Mr Braddon an excuse for heaping derision on the industrial systom of the country. For that is exactly how 'such critics argue. Everything untoward that befalls a country—from a banker’s embezzlement to an epidemic of mumps—is attributed to labour laws. In tho ease of these dairy factories, the loss has arisen solely through the miscaloulation of directors; but in the net or ultimate result it will be written off against Labour just the same. Capital finds, in short, that while Labour’s brain is still at its service it has less of Labour’s blood than formerly. Wherefore there are shrieks that the outlook is " distinctly gioomy.”