Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, THURSDAY, DEC, 29, 1938. INDUSTRIAL PLANNING

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19824, 29 December 1938, Page 4

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, THURSDAY, DEC, 29, 1938. INDUSTRIAL PLANNING

Unemployment and its allied problems have led to unprecedented efTorts in Great Britain to develop new industries under modern conditions, and already a large measure of success has been obtained. Most publicity has given to what have been termed “depressed areas,” or localities in which large populations have been left more or less marooned as a result of the closing down of the industries upon which they had been dependent for employment. The difficulty was attacked from two directions, firstly, by the transfer of workers to other spheres, and secondly, by offering special inducements for the establishment of industries in the areas affected. The scheme has met with a good deal of success and has been greatly assisted by the rearmament programme which has led to renewed activity in the heavy industries which were most afTected by the depression, Without resorting to excessive restriction or regulation, manufacturers have been encouraged to erect new factories in specified areas and have thus assisted in the endeavours to control the expansion of industry so as to secure a more evently distributed production. Nothing, of course, will ever displace the highly-industrialised centres of Great Britain, but much already has been done to ensure that activity is spread over a greater number of centres.

Complementary to this scheme for dealing primarily with the depressed areas is another project which has become known as trading estates. Here, also, there is assistance from the Government without unnecessary interference, the main object in this instance being to establish new industries in some of the older industrial areas and to ensure that they are established under the best conditions. Areas of land have been made available by the Government or municipalities and standardised factories are provided for housing new light industries. On the Hillingdon estate, near Glasgow, for instance, seventy leases of these factories have been taken and employment provided for nearly 1000 workers, and at Gateshead, on the Tyneside, 04 factories are in occupation. Throughout Britain, similar schemes have been launched, and one in a new suburb of Manchester is expected ultimately to house more than 100,000 people and to become an important centre for new light industries. The factories concerned are engaged in a wide variety of occupations, ranging from leather goods and 'JO> patent buttons to aircraft factories and flour mills, and they will all have the advantage of improved working conditions and . reduced overhead costs.

This development is a more or less natural one and should go a long way towards eliminating much of the overcrowding in the larger cities, at the same time providing better housing for the people and spreading industry throughout the country. In the comparatively recent past it was essential that industry should be established in localities with certain natural advantages, notably those which could provide cheap power and transport facilities. This meant that there was an inevitable concentration adjacent to coal-mines and the coast. To-day, however, the same considerations do not apply to nearly the same extent, because cheap electric power has largely displaced coal and modern motor and rail transport has reduced the advantages of sea-borne traffic. Even the canal system has been improved through mechanisation and it is now possible for merchandise of all kinds to be transported to and from the Midlands entirely by water. All these developments, therefore, have contributed to the object of diffusing industries throughout the country instead of concentrating them in the large ports, and this means that there has been something in the nature of a rural drift which will enable factory workers to live and work under infinitely better conditions than those which hove sometimes existed in the past. It is not too soon for New Zealand to take heed of this trend in the Old Country and to profit from the experience there. The tendency in the Dominion has been for industries to gravitate to the centres, with the result that the population is most unevently distributed. Although there is no slum problem as it is known in the older countries, living conditions are already bad enough and the concentration of population in comparatively small areas leads to other problems. The position has not been relieved, and to some extent has been aggravated, by a State housing policy which mainly concerns itself with the centres. Since the State has already interested itself in this direction, it could with advantage follow the lines adopted in Britain. There are many places in the Dominion adjacent to the railways system and served by cheap electric power which could be used as small industrial centres where new townships could be created under infinitely better conditions than those which now exist in the cities. The cheapness of the land would not only reduce the overhead costs of the factories but would also enable more space to be provided for homes and would eliminate the difficulty of high transport costs for workers. The Government could give a lead to in-

dustry by making sites available for the factories themselves and by assisting in the building of homes which would establish the workers near to their employment and in surroundings which would have many advantages over the cities.