THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1934. CO-ORDINATION OF INDUSTRY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22424, 20 November 1934, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1934. CO-ORDINATION OF INDUSTRY

The New Zealana Manufacturers’ Federation placed itself on record in a striking manner on the question of State supervision of industry when, at its annual conference last week, it endorsed unanimously proposals for procuring greater co-ordination in manufacturing enterprise in New Zealand. The federation evidently concludes that such rationalisation—to use a convenient word—as it desires could not be undertaken effectively by means of its own organisation. It is prepared, and apparently desirous, to accept the advice and utilise the authority of the State in a plan to increase industrial efficiency. The general scheme which, as submitted for discussion by the conference, seems to form the groundwork of the plans now referred to the Federation Council, provides, in the first place, for the unification of the Government departments that are brought into contact with secondary industry. In the second place, it provides, in addition to other proposals making for co-operative action, for the setting up of a permanent Industrial Commission. This commission would be representative of manufacturers and the State, with the Minister of Industries as chairman, and in its functions would be included the promotion and assisting of schemes for the co-ordina-tion of productive units in the various industries, and the provision of safeguards against uneconomic conditions such as ovei’-capitalisation and the introduction of excessive plant, to the end that “ manufacturing industries shall expand on a sound economic basis, increasing their efficiency and eliminating certain uneconomic forms of competition which arc neither profitable to industry nor beneficial to the

consuming public.” The part which the commission would take in the supervision of manufacturing industries might be described as

similar to that which the Commission of Agriculture is to have in ordering primary production in the Dominion. It may he regarded as unlikely that the Government, when these proposals are put before it, will place obstacles in the way of concurring in

the federation’s scheme. Governments are not commonly unfavourable to plans for the extension of their authority. And the proposals of the federation, as we understand them, unquestionably contemplate an association of the State with the manufacturers in the planning of secondary industry. It is almost permissible to question whether the federation sufficiently appreciates the extent to which it might commit itself to the paternal guardianship of the State if its proposals are adopted. The ideal of a better co-ordination of industry is itself to be commended. The manufacturers recognise that in a complex economic world the old pattern of “ rugged individualism ” in industry creates waste of effort and money. They have powerful competitors abroad, with whom they can best hope to contend by the most careful and prudent consolidation and expansion of their enterprises. It is not, of course, of public concern what steps industry may take internally to equip itself the better, so long as such control as may be introduced is not restrictive of fair competition. But the public cannot be said to be unconcerned in a proposal under which the functions of the State will include an increasing regulation of private enterprise. The Manufacturers’ Federation appears to be fully seized of its responsibilities to the public in the respect that its proposals are not to be read as a plan to protect industry at the consumer’s expense. Any doubts which may be expressed concerning the decision of the federation must be confined, for the present, to the question whether the manufacturers are not possibly inviting the State to exercise an influence over their operations that may in time prove irksome to them.