CHANGING SCENE

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 23013, 3 October 1944, Page 4

CHANGING SCENE

What Future Holds Inventions And Problems

“He who would read the riddle of the future —as everyone really would — should search diligently among the records of the past," said Mr G. J. Park, principal of the Seddon Memorial Technical College, Auckland, in an address on "The Changing Scene.” “The best way to discover what changes will follow this war is to study the past, for cycles of boom and depression have been a feature of the past 150 years, since the industrial revolution,” said Mr Park.

Tracing the progress of science and invention, the speaker said, the term “second industrial revolution” had been used with justification to describe our own time. For war purposes, each country had mobilised an army whose fighting place was in the laboratories, with the result that new devices were being invented in almost every field. “Electronics, for example, is said to be opening up a field as wide as electrical science, as we have known it,” said Mr Park. “Its principles are known to few because they are new.”

Turning to economic questions, the speaker said that our future problem was undoubtedly how far State interference would go. The production of wealth was the first stage to welfare, and State interference seemed to him to be getting near the stage where the total national income was being retarded. There seemed little doubt that the future scheme must be, for a period, at any rate, to concentrate again on increasing the nation’s efforts to create wealth.

The need for a comprehensive census of production in New Zealand, to permit comparison of individual effort with those of other countries, was stressed by the speaker, “if only,” he said, “to permit the public to judge whether Mr Webb was justified in raising his hat to the miners.” World control of prices was touched on by Mr Park, but he considered the outlook for agreement among nations on this question was not bright. It would require a series of central banks in most countries, and world conferences to work out the necessary controls. “The choice seems to be between control either by the great financial interests (to their gain) with communism on the horizon, or by another control worked out by our own representatives,” he said. Mr Park said he doubted whether the heavy drop in prices which followed the last war would occur after this one, partly because the normal business man expected the reaction and would be more prepared for it than he was last time. “You might not have expected that a successful business man would heed mere history book warnings that he would need special caution in or about 1922-23, yet such knowledge would have prevented the ruin of many businesses,” concluded Mr Park.