PLAIN FACTS!

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 667, 20 May 1929, Page 10

PLAIN FACTS!

NO MYSTERIOUS THEORIES SIMPLE STORY ABOUT IMPORTED GOODS (W ritten for Tim SL'X) The benefits that accrue to every, one from the purchase o£ New Zea-land-made goods are definite ami easily understood—there is no luysterv about it. no tangled arguments about • balance of trade" or "theories of economics,” or anything of that sort. The advantages can be followed, by anvonc as they concern facts with whi-i everyone is familiar. The first thing to remember is that every pound spent on imported goods means a pound gone out of the country, and every pound spent on New Zealand articles means that that pound not only helps our fellow citizens, but remains here to help their business over and over again. Consider for a moment such a common pantry commodity as tomato sauce. There are foreign-made sauces which could be bought. For. say, a dozen such bottles we paid £1 sterling. and said good-bye to that £i for ever. We have the sauce and we have seen the last of the £l. Now say. for example, that New Zealand-made sauce was purchased For the £1 we have the same number of bottles of sauce, but that £x remains in the Dominion. If we follow that £1 we will have the secret of protection and free trade. First of all, portion of it goes to the local tomato growers who use it to pay for their gardens, and pay wages for their employees. The money also pays for the New Zealand-made bottles in which the fruit is packed, also for the printing of the labels on the bottles and for transport. Each stage is performed by to cerns which employ men—New Zee landers. With steady business of iv, nature these men, instead of being in the dread of unemployment, can now pay their living expenses, put what is over in the savings bank, or purchase all sorts of necessities and luxuries for themselves that will in turn profit tht. shopkeepers, or whoever they deal with. With this increased those shopkeepers in turn can afford to spend more money or employ more men, or in other ways keep money in circulation and keep the country busy and prosperons. That is purely the business and financial side of the transaction. There has also to be remembered in favour of the New Zealand sauce that the fruit is grown in the excellent New Zealand climate, that it is prepared under the supervision of th 3 strictest health regulations in the world. Everyone in New Zealand knows these facts for himself. The progress of that bottle of tomato sauce can be followed from the garden to the table, handled all the way through New Zealand businesses, creating employment and prosperity for the Dominion. When the foreign sauce is sold, however, the industries through which it passed created employment for* the other country. Of course, tomato sauce is only one article in the purchases of the ordin ary family, and a tiny «ectiou of trade, but it illustrates in a way that abstract arguments and tables ot figures can never do the principles ot which the growth of local industries are governed. Great oaks from little acorns grow; and big busineses are built up on t|e sales of single articles ia small suburban shops. The continued purchasing of New Zealand-made goods of even the most moderate reqiurements will, in time, build up strong and soundly-prosper-ous businesses—great oaks in the development of this virile young Dominion. With a strong basis in steady sales and a local market, these businesses could employ the hosts of boys and girls leaving our shools, and could ensure such a general level of prosperity that no one need be unemployed.