DEVELOPMENT OF RESOURCES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21019, 7 May 1930, Page 15

DEVELOPMENT OF RESOURCES

IMPORTANCE OF SECONDARY INDUSTRIES BUTTRESSES OF PRIMARY PRODUCTION By MR H. E. HOLLAND, M.P. (Leader of the Labour Party). It is a Bound proposition that New Zealand should build up the industries that are natural to the country and therefore of economic value to th& people. We can ho more afford to neglect the secondary fields of productive effort than the primary. It is beyond contradiction that the goods which are manufactured in the secondary establishments of New Zealand, equally with the primary products, can hold their own—and more than their own —in quality with the commodities produced in any other part of. the world. Besides, the national encouragement of the secondary industries of the country expressed in, the general determination of the people to purchase the goods made here, recognising that their manufacture is a logical development of the country’s natural resources, must ultimately play an important part in absorbing large numbers of workers wbo would otherwise be left to swell the ranks of the unemployed. So that when we buy goods made in New Zealand we lend some assist- ' ance in the direction of helping to solve jvhat is New Zealand’s immediate outstanding problem—that of unemployment; for, after all, the real solution of the unemployment problem is the finding of employment, furthermore, the secondary industries are destined to* stand as buttresses of primary production. They make for the creation of a permanent home market for the primary producers. The greater the number of permanently employed and well-paid workers there are in the secondary industries, the more stable and remunerative will be the local market on which the primary producer goes to , sell his commodities. For these and a multitude of other reasons which are apparent, I do not hesitate to associate myself with the efforts of those responsible for the organisation of the “Made in New Zealand” Week.