OUR INDUSTRIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 9, 9 January 1913, Page 4

OUR INDUSTRIES.

The ‘Year Book’ for 1912 will contain details of the Dominion’s industries as they were ascertained at the last census, and the advance sheets of the publication which have already been published enable the ‘Lyttelton Times’ to make an interesting comparison between the figures for 1906 and those for 1911. The official returns cover just upon one hundred industries, from a block and pump factory with its one employee to the 241 printing and book-binding establishments with thcii 4222 employees, but the ‘Times’ gives only the more important of them. Th/c following table shows the figures foi 1906 and 1911 in the particular industries it has selected and the totals in all the industries:—

Totals 4186 56359 4402 56231 The ‘Times’ also points out “that the most striking feature of the returns is not shown in the above table. This is the largo increase in the amount paid as wages. The number of factories increased from 4186 to 4402, while the number of hands employed actu ally decreased from 56,359 to 56.234. but in spite of this decrease the amount paid in wages increased from £4,457,619 to £5,572,270. This increase in the total amount of wages is made all the more significant by tin fact that while the male employees decreased by 2679 the female employee; increased by 2554. Apparently employers have been using female labou more extensively in' recent yeafs"thnn' they did in 1906; and yet the average wage lias gone up by 25 per cent, lithe meantime the value of the produc tion of the factories, including repairs has risen from £23,444,235, to £31,729,002 a year. There are many other suggestive, features in the returns—the growth of the output in many industries without a corresponding growth in the number of hands employed, probably due to the installation of labour-saving machinery, the evidence of “concentration,” the application of a business principle which is sometimes called by another name, in the brewing and milling industries, the stagnant condition of the boot factories from the workers’ point of view, the decline of the flax-milling industry, and so forth—but these offer a

wide field for speculation which we cannot enter jnst now. On the whole the figures show that in those industries for which the Dominion is specially suited by its natural conditions fairly satisfactory progress was made during the quinquennial period.”

1906. 1911 NumNum Industry. ber. Hands. her. B ands Meat works 37 3190 41 3978 Enter and cheese 264 1484 338 1504 Grain mills 77 540 66 428 Breweries 72 781 60 741 Soap-candle 19 238 20 252 Sawmills 444. 9111 534 6S77 Woodware 39 304 9 30 Lime-cement 20 280 17 45C Brick-pottery 125 1254 94 966 Iron foundries 71 1838 69 13)5 Engineering 61 1868 120 242*1 Printing 239 3898 241 4222 Agricultural imimplements 29 793 19 646 Fellmongering 99 1336 79 1372 Furniture 172 1528 207 1639 Boots 72 2206 74 2072