Our Industries

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 986, 31 May 1930, Page 6

Our Industries

The Closed Door

SHUTTING OUT PROSPERITY Why Stagnation and Depression ? ONE of the grim tragedies in life is when the skilled worker finds liis occupation gone, and the doors of Ins factory closed bv shortage of orders and business stagnation tie lias served a long apprenticeship to his trade, an< P asse 1 time as improver to emerge a fully-qualified tiat esman v ’ can hold his own with any in the world. The materials aiu inachinerv are liere. His products are needed by his New Zealanders. Yet he is thrown into idleness and despair because the work lie could do is being sent out ot his country.

T*iie economic waste through unemployment is one of the most serious factors in retarding the progress of our country and blocking the restoration of prosperity. Last year the Government alone spent £1,400,000 in the relief of idle workers, many of whom are skilled operatives unable to find work at their trades. But apart from the loss of wealth through compulsory idleness, and the cost of relief from private and official sources, there is the serious psychological effect on those who have to suffer through enforced idleness. A contented worker is one who is kept busy adding to the national production of wealth, with a happy family and a well-filled pay envelope every Friday afternoon. Paying his shopping hills, adding to his home comforts, and perhaps building or buying his own house, he is one of the most valuable assets the City can produce. SEED BEDS OF REVOLUTION But the worker thrown on the streets and haunting employment bureaux, vainly scanning the advertisement columns of the papers; goaded with the spectre of debt and perhaps poverty; his wife forced to seek charitable aid for the bare neces sities of life for the home; such work ers are always in the mood for suggestions of revolt and revolution. The right to work is a demand that, cannot be denied indefinitely, and the only rational and sound solution of unemployment is to be found in safe guarding, fostering, and expanding our productive industries: by adopting every means possible for the starting of new ones to produce our requirements here, instead of having them

i manufactured for us by workers of other countries while our fellow New I Zealanders are walking the streets in j idleness. If only ten per cent, of the goods we now import from other coun- | tries were made in New Zealand it ; would give work for 5,000 more skilled New Zealand workers. Why send those orders for goods abroad when we can fill them with the work of our hands from our own materials? The countries which supply those goods, in most instances, take but little from us in return, and we are getting deeper and deeper intc their debt every year the importing craze continues. That external debt is an evermounting burden on all our industries, as interest has to be met, sinking funds arranged, and ultimately the full amount must be paid. Our own producers are taxed now more heavily than any other country, but those who dump their goods here pay no rates or taxes in New Zealand; they cel lect their credit drafts here, and the money has gone in paying for labour, materials, and profits In outside countries, while our own industries are wilting and our workers idle. The drain on our financial resources by having to meet a yearly bill of about fifty millions for imports from outside countries has caused stagnation and depression where w-e should be prosperous and flourishing. A survey of the Budget, our national balance-sheet, shows a deficit of £3,000,000 for the current year, and we must be prepared to meet increased taxes and the cutting down

of the cost of running the country That alone indicates more rather tw less unemployment. ** THE SCRAP HEAP Our unemployed can take a walk down the wharf and watch an American ship loading thousands of tons of scrap-iron which is being exported to the United States, and in due course that scrap will return to us in a highly manufactured form in the shape of many goods we could and should produce for ourselves. At one time our scrap-iron was sent to New Zealand foundries and fashioned into useful implements, nwchinerv and articles which we no* import. That is how we scrap onr local industries and throw our o*n industrial workers on to the lahotr scrap-heap. The people of New Zealand are now being urged by leads:* of all shades of thought to wake up and realise the peril we have to face No one can suggest that eur Governors-General, and all our political leaders, are mere scaremongers when they point out the imperative necessity of every right-thinking citizen doing all he can to keep our factories running and their operatives busy by buying more and still more New Zealand goods. The careless and indifferent buyers may think it matters little whether the money they spend goes to employ workers ii other countries or to keep our own busy. The unthinking shopkeeper may say it makes no difference to him whether he sells local or imported goods so long as he can keep sales

up and make his profit. But when they see our own wealth producers forced into idleness simply because i their own fellow-citizens reject their i products and show preference for ontI siders, the folly of buying abroad what we can make for ourselves must be- ; come apparent to any sensible per- | son. The splendid display made by our local manufacturers in the new Hall of Industries gives but a small idea of how we can meet our own requirements in an Infinite variety of ways without sending orders overseas and throwing our own industries idle. A shilling or a pound spent on something made in New Zealand stays in New Zealand and circulates here. It keeps our workers employed in producing the materials and manufacturing them, and the time has arrived when the country wants every shilling it can keep here, and every worker possible kept employed in productive labour. KEEP OUR FACTORY DOORS I WIDE OPEN AND OUR INDUSTRIES ! FLOURISHING BY BUYING OUR | OWN MADE GOODS.