The Christchurch Star. PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. Gloucester Street and Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALAND. London Representatives : R. B. BRETT & SON NEW BRIDGE HOUSE, 30/34 NEW BRIDGE STREET, LONDON, E.C.4. SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1935. THE POINT OF CONSUMPTION.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20653, 29 June 1935, Page 10

The Christchurch Star. PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. Gloucester Street and Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALAND. London Representatives : R. B. BRETT & SON NEW BRIDGE HOUSE, 30/34 NEW BRIDGE STREET, LONDON, E.C.4. SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1935. THE POINT OF CONSUMPTION.

TT IS NOT UNLIKELY that there was a Santa Claus idea in the minds of the children who wrote to the Wellington Education Board asking for a milk ration, but the board very properly said, in effect, this is a job for tlie State or else for the people who are inspired with a year round Christmas spirit. The appeal touches an even wider problem. In the Old Country the question of agricultural overproduction is resolving itself into a consideration of what the country ought to consume. It is being realised that policies of restriction impoverish tlie country, for the simple reason that they also restrict consumption. “ Hence special assistance with a view to lowering costs or artificially expanding the market may be necessary as a temporary measure,” says a writer in the “Round Table.” “In the interests of the Commonwealth as a whole it is far better to apply a subsidy to the point of consumption (for instance giving milk to school children) than to the point of production; for the latter type of plan tends to aggravate the relative overproduction that it is intended to remedy.”

A PROMISING RECRUIT. TT is safe to predict a distinguished career for Mr Malcolm MacDonald, especially in the sphere in which he finds himself as Secretary of State for the Colonies. No man in England in recent years seems to have grasped both tlie Colonial and the Imperial viewpoint so thoroughly. His overseas travels, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, have given him a firmer conviction of the evolutionary process involved in nation-building overseas, that is to say, of the greater value not of mass immigration, but of a voluntary' process of self-selection and gradual absorption in the normal expansion of a young country. His report to the Government on his Centenary visit strikes the real note of Imperial greatness, which depends upon the maintenance of British ideals of democratic Government, individual liberty and ordered peace in a chain of British nations, upholding British prestige in a manner in which no single nation, however powerful, could aspire to.

TOO MODEST. IVTILK is a preventive of disease, and sunshine a cure. New Zealand has underconsumption of both, accompanied by what is fallaciously known as overproduction. But, just as with children’s feeding an organised effort is needed to stimulate consumption, so with sunshine and fresh air a guiding hand is needed to bring producer and consumer into closer touch. The Sunshine League is fully justified in asking for £IOO from the accumulating Travis Bequest for a survey of bone and joint tuberculosis in New Zealand, hut a Health Department worthy of tlie name should be charged with such a duty, and it would probably he better for the league to make a bold bid for the establishment of heliotherapy institutions without delay. A solarium in the Southern Alps would he a direct attack on an enemy that might be wiped out in the next twenty-five years.

fireside dangers. ' r Y''DE explosion of a water heating boiler owing to the closing of a frozen vent pipe is rare enough in New Zealand, hut has been very common in the Northern Hemisphere. It calls for close inspection of such installations, especially where an electric heater is used, and tlie legislature should strengthen the hands of local bodies by making thermostatic regulation compulsory.