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Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 97, 30 May 1914, Page 8

While the Labour unions in New Zealand are making praiseworthy efforts jbo gain for their members improved conditions of work and increases of wages, they would! do well to remember that their exactions, if pressed beyond a certain stage, will inevitably have the effect of strangling in their infancy certain of the manufacturing industries. It will be a case of killing the goose that lays the golden egg, if, because of the pressure of trade unions, the employers in any industry are forced to close their doors on the ground that they are unable to pay the wages demanded 4nd 'make a reasonable profit at the same itime. In the recently heard ease of the machine shopsj it was demonstrated by the employers that the industry was a languishing one, and that ,tp add to their troubles, machinery that could be produced in New Zealand was being imported. Judging irom the facts submitted by a principal in the fellmongers' dispute yesterday an equally unsatisfactory condition of affairs obtains in connection with that enterprise—and a most important enterprise, so far as New Zealand is concerned; The union is seeking increased! rates of pay, and dther„aib;^t#g^ plainly indicated that, as things were, the trade could not stand the strain. 'What is to be done? There is a case —idealistic, it may be —to be made out for high wages, though many employers refuse to recognise it. It has been put concretely thus by a well known publicist: "High wages, by increasing consumption, enable producers to run their plant at full economic pressure, and so to economise in output.'' It is only another way of saying that poorly-paid labour is dear at any price; that adequately paid labour is in the long run cheap labour. The greatest exporting c( v.ntry in Europe is the United King(k in where, strange, to relate, wages are, relatively speaking, the highest in Europe. Germany comes next both as to exports and wages paid, and it is significant that, paying larger wages than her rival, Fiance, Germany, in the last 30 years has increased her exports 150 per cent, while France has improved hers about 70 per cent. JS'ew Zealand's youthful manufacturing industries require adequate protection in the shape of a solid tariff-wall against the competition of oversea cheap labour. It is essential that these industries, if they are to prosper eventually, must be nurtured tenderly. And it is just as essential that until, her manufactories are past the wavering stage, the unions should not embarrass honourable employers by exacting demands. Better half a loaf to-day Avith the prospect of ii whole loaf, than the whole loaf to-day and starvation to-morrow.