FINANCIAL POSITION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16434, 24 May 1921, Page 5

FINANCIAL POSITION.

EFFECT ON WORKERS. Mr J. A. Frost ick, in an address bo tile Canterbury Chamber of Commerce last night, expressed his views on the financial position as it affects the workers. He said : “ Some people tell ns that the crisis is owing to the low price of wool. The wool situation is a very serious one for 4 the producers, and also for the country, but the total value of the export of" wool at the high prices ruling in 1918 rivas seven and a half millions. Supposing that wool was of no value this .year, seven and a half mi Hi on 3 would not have upset our national finance. The root cause of. our . trouble is the craze which set in after the armistice for foreign made goods. Forty millions sterling in value were imported more than the country needed. r l ue money is not her© to pay for the goods without serious financial disturbance. “Too many boots—result, hundreds of men and women skilled in the production cf these goods are now unemployed and the industry is earning nothing for itself or for the country. The same remarks apply to clothing. Importations of clothing are huge, a good deal of it of very doubtful quality. , Again, th© result is that hundreds of people in the Dominion suddenly find their wages stopped, which means that their power to purchase the goods they nerd is gone. 11 The foregoing illustations appti to practically every class of goods. Keen at this early stage, pnod respectable hard-working citizens are piea'iing for the right to livo. Although the

tion has not reached the acute sfc; j.o, public-relief works are conter.v, ia r < d. Public money v.iii have to be spoilt—not our money, for the- Prime M ooter has to go hat in hand to the monevlenders of other countries. WLm a picture for the individual citizen to look at alter years of unpara Hod prosperity l What does it mean to him? It may reduce him almost to pauperism ; it may absorb all his pavings, cr plunge him into debt and all because we bought foreign goods which we could have made for ourselves. “ The farmer is intensely interest because the money which would rave been available for development work is now locked up in bonded stior ?=.. I am conscious that on many public ou< s* tions either the working man cr the farmer is frequently used t.i dumfrustrate some j>oint 01* (other: but T urn quite satisfied that, when 100 econoTiiio side regarding New Zealand manufacture is properly understood, the primary producer will recognise that the home market is the best one, and that the feeding of the nation > his Particular care. If the principle to which I have already referred, is adopted—that every producer is on tit! >d to interest on his capital, to re/.erne and to pay good wages, a trading profit and a proper margin for contingencies—then Hio farmer, above all oth .?•*>», will no longer he worried by the vagaries of the foreign market, at least so far as home consumption is concerned. The only risk that ho will take L in regard to the surplus which the nation is unable to absorb, and this will gradually right itself under protection of the industries, which will create a ln-ge additional population of food consum-