The New Zealands Times. FRIDAY, ABRIL 21, 1922. PRODUCTS, AND PRICES

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11190, 21 April 1922, Page 4

The New Zealands Times. FRIDAY, ABRIL 21, 1922. PRODUCTS, AND PRICES

Lik4 New Zealand, Australia is tackling the threefold problem of products, prices, and profits. How, by haffmony of the three can the production of the country be maintained ? That is the problem. For some years, happy years they were, the refrigerator was thought to havo solved it. It was a, comfortable belief which, during the war, achieved a culminating blaze of glory, in whieh our great staple' wool shared, though not of the products which depend on the refrigerator. After the war tho producing industry fell into darkness. The element of profit had disappeared, and all the departments of production were face to face with ruin. Thus tbd gravest economic peril of our history has now been averted, chiefly by the turn in the affairs of the disorganised world, and partly by the co-operative effort of the meat-growers who, under Ministerial and Parliamentary guidance, established tho meat pool, which enjoys a. certain guarantee of State help, to. a certain extent. Thia example the Australian Commonwealth is following. This is not in the meat industry generally, but iB confined to the\ beef department, because the rivalry by the Argentine* has acquired a dominance in the European markets which threatens the great cattle industry of Australia with something worse than oraeping paralysis. The method adopted is not quite on the lines of the New Zealand meat pool, partly because of the variety of conditions in the States of the Commonwealth, and partly for other reasons. But the principle is.the same, and New Zealand has the right to the complacency usually produced by the flattery of invitation. Our project was launched in a storm of protests, but the Australian fades a calm world, convinced by tho fubeidenoe of the New Zealand disturbance.

In one respetjt the two projects follow the lines of wisdom. They neither of them aim at keeping up market prices artificially, both confining their effort, on the one hand,' to cutting costs and simplifying management, and, on the other, to recognising the need for temporary help from the State. There is here one point of difference, for whereas our Government makes a freight subsidy per lb, contingent as an equal grant by the Home Government, the’ Australian grant is unconditional. As the difference may prejudice our case, it would, may we suggest, be well to try to get the Commonwealth into line with us in this matter. That would improve the parallel between the two methods. The best part of the parallel, however, is, as we have said, the determination not to interfere with prices. Against such folly one would .have thought that commonsense would have been a , sufficient guard. It has so proved in Australasia, but in other places the attempt has been ' made, nevertheless. For instance, the rubber planters of Malaya tried to meet the stamped price of rubber by a proposal to restrict production, fix a minimum price, get cover from an Act of the Parliament of Britain. But it was realised that it was impossible to force objecting planters, both within and outside the Empire, into the arrangement, and as the opposition of these planters in Ceylon, Insulinde, Siam, Saigon,' to say nothing of other countries, objected very strongly indeed, nothing more was heard of the matter. The planters of Malaya probably were guided by the preoedent of the South African diamond fields, set by the famous Rhodes-De Beers agreement. But a monopoly is necessary to restriction with big prioes, and there was no monopoly in rubber. Moreover, when American opinion was heard—for mast of the Malayan rubber goes to America and the restriction proposal was met with American threats—the caso against restriction with high prices was complete. It is tho case, really, against “go-slow.” which is the ban placed mistakenly against tho urgent need for increased production in the world. When the faults and frictions, and malpractices of our system of marketing products have been, with the finan-

rial help of tho State, straightened out, the outer enemy will remain to be considered. The chief—at present the only outer enemy—is tho Argentine against the frozen beef of Australia. ' He is more powerful against Australia in the meat market than against New Zealand, because Australia has a very large dependence on beef, which is Argentina’s stronghold, while New Zealand’s chief dependence is on mutton and lamb, wherein Argentina is irredeemably weak. Australia’s co-operative effort in beef has more than the ordinary competition, to which discussion seems to be confined, to face. The ordinary competition can be met by improved methods. But the competition of the Argentine refrigerator cannot, in the present stage of refrigerator development, be met. Distance forces Australia to freeze; shorter distance allows Argentina to merely cool; and as long as that is so, Argentina will have a lead of several pence per lb of beef Gold. New Zealand fears no such handicap, for cooling processes, which preserve better, do not affect original quality. They do not, in point of fact, improve climate or pasture. With these birthrights in her equipment, New Zealand will face Argentina in tho London market from a superior height to the end of time,