WHAT COULD BE DONE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 732, 3 August 1929, Page 7

WHAT COULD BE DONE

LOOKING INTO THE FIGURES ‘‘About £45,000,000 worth of goods are being imported into New Zealand annually. This amount,” stated a prominent Auckland business man recently, “represents £125,000 for each of the seven days in the week, and nobody can deny that a very large proportion of this amount is made up of the value of goods that could be easily and profitably made here. “A glance through the imports for any financial year indicates clearly that at least £ 8,000,000 worth of the imported goods could be made here by' a slight extension of our present factories, and by the use of raw. materials available within the Dominion. This would mean that about £ G extra would be spent on New Zealand-made goods per head per annum, and this does not seem an unreasonable thing to expect: yet it means that about £2,000,000 more would b*- distributed annually in New Zealand in wages, thereby giving employment to over 12.000 men and support 3J-,000 people. “Another consideration that should spur us on is the fact that Australia is advancing very' rapidly in the development of her secondary industries, and the latest figures from the Stat • of Victoria alone show that the output of factories other than those connected with meat preserving ,r dairying interests amt anted to £94,000,000 in 1921, which is equal to £6O a head of the population. During this same period New Zealand produced in like industries £51,000.000 worth of goods or £4l a head of the population. Comparisons are odious, w’e know, but it does us good and often encourages us to further efforts when we realise what is being done by the other fellow, especially when he is very' close by. Here is something for yon to remember In Victoria the number of woollen and knitting mills has increased during the past three years from G 8 to 161. These figures show that there is still a wide margin for us to work upon.”