The Southland Times MONDAY, APRIL 28, 1941. 24 Hours a Day

Southland Times, Issue 24420, 28 April 1941, Page 4

The Southland Times MONDAY, APRIL 28, 1941. 24 Hours a Day

IN an interview at Wellington, reported in our news columns this morning, the chairman of the New Zealand Wool Council (Mr H. M. Christie) elaborated the remarks he made in Dunedin recently on the necessity for working vital industries up to 24 hours a day. Mr Christie was formerly a Labour member of Parliament; his record must absolve him from the charge commonly made against persons who advocate a more intensive industrial effort, that they are using the war to attack the workers’ conditions. He has emphasized that he is advocating nothing more than a temporary modification of these conditions to meet the war emergency, and he has shown how the modification he suggests will actually help to protect the workers by strengthening the country’s economy. As a result of the restriction of imports and exports New Zealand faces the need for increasing her output of some products and changing the form of others. Mr Christie has mentioned as examples the woollen and canning industries. The production of more woollen goods would enable the Dominion to meet the full local demand and also to export to Britain. Canning offers a means of storing surplus meat, and perhaps even a means of exporting it (since canned goods do not require refrigerated ships). In each case maximum production is plainly desirable, not only to help the Empire’s war effort but also to provide some compensation for the drastic fall in New Zealand’s overseas trade. But the only means of increasing production in these, and other, industries are the installation of more plant or the use of the existing plant for longer hours. The first alternative is now practically ruled out: very little new machinery is obtainable, and that can be landed only at a prohibitive cost and after long delay. Thus there is no escaping the second alternative: if production is to be increased, greater use must be made of the existing plant. In other words, the plant must be worked up to 24 hours a day, in shifts. Mr Christie’s reasoning is logical and unanswerable. It carries him further, to the point where he insists that in such circumstances overtime rates must be abandoned in favour of shift work “at agreed-upon rates which it is practicable to pay.” Mr Christie realizes that it is little use producing more goods if they can be produced only at a heavilyincreased cost, and have to be sold at heavily-increased prices. The Labour conference has recently stressed the need for a stabilization of prices. But prices can be stabilized only if consumers’ needs can be met without increases in costs. The Labour conference cannot have greater production, overtime rates, and stabilized prices as well. What is a great deal more important, the Dominion cannot contribute her full share of the war effort while useful productive machinery is lying idle for 16 hours out of every 24. In his Wellington interview Mr Christie applied to New Zealand Colonel Knox’s appeal to the people of the United States —“For God's sake help, before it is too late.” It is no longer a question of making a “good” war effort, or a better effort than in 191418. Nothing less than the maximum of which the country is capable will do now.