A CONFIRMED OPTIMIST

Otago Witness, Issue 4042, 1 September 1931, Page 68

A CONFIRMED OPTIMIST

FUTURE OF THE DOMINION

GOVERNOR-GENERAL’S ADVICE. WELLINGTON, August 27. The Wellington Winter Show was opened this afternoon by the GovernorGeneral (Lord Bledisloe). In his address his Excellency said': “ I remain in these dark days of transient depression a confirmed optimist regarding the future of this Dominion, subject only to two considerations of the conditions. The first is a full realisation on the part of every individual in the country of the gravity of the nation’s financial position, and of the possible repercussion upon the national welfare of his own activities, whether as a producer, distributor, carrier, financier or purchaser. The other condition is the avoidance of a too conservative attitude arising from the inevitable geographical detachment from the throbbing centres of the world’s big industrial activities towards the rapidly changing methods of production, distribution, exchange and finance. We are passing through a pacific economic revolution. Its recognition' and the individual action based upon it are the surest means of avoiding a revolution of a less pacific character. A temporary industrial depression is not wholly bad for a nation or for the individuals who compose it. Sweet, it is said, are the uses of adversity. In two respects are they especially salutary, first, in promoting a sense of national solidarity, sympathetic co-opera-tion between all classes and a determination to face without grumbling our full share of all reasonable sacrifice demanded of us, and secondly, in developing resourcefulness, ingenuity and self-help virtues which are apt to be at a discount in times of prosperity. Much can be done to promote the national welfare by developing our home industries, especially in relation to the natural products which cannot be fully utilised in the factor? and in producing in the Dominion’s furniture and other workshops goods upon which New Zealand work people might well be employed, but which may have come in the past from foreign countries, such as are not good customers for our Dominion products.”