THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1908. LESSONS OF THE DEPRESSION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3059, 2 December 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1908. LESSONS OF THE DEPRESSION.

"Sweet are the uses of adversity," wrote Shakespere, and even depressions have their lessons, and thus uses more or less sweet. New Zea-Jand—-and New Zealand communities —have learned, no doubt, many useful things already as a result of the prevailing trade depression, but there are one or two lessons of outstanding prominence. In the first place the throwing back of our Dominion on to its own resources for capital to supply a larger proportion of the wages of its industrial world than it has hitherto had to find has shown in a searching light how ill-prepared the country is to withstand for long a heavy loss of revenue derived from the export of primary products, the prices for which are beyond theexporter's power to control, and which are as fickle as a tropical wind. Year by year it must be becoming increasingly apparent to the people and the Government of this country that something very definite will have to be,done within the Dominion in the way 6f developing our industries, and developing them on rational lines. It is a subject which strikes BO deeply into the root of our future prosperity—immediate and remote—that procrastination will only tend to

make the remedying of present trade evils more difficult of accomplishment, for many reasons. For years and years past, this resourceful land

of ours has been exploited for the industrial and general commercial benefit of other countries of the world. We have, for example, seen our magnificent kauri forest asset hewn away until ac the present time it is now only about ten years off vanishing point. The timber has gone thousands of miles, to all quarters of the compass, and we are in the position now of using in New Zealand articles made up in other countries from . our kauri. The same remark applies to our primary products, and from present indications is likely to apply for some time to come. We do not doubt that in the mir.ds of most people in this country there is a very strong and very natural desire to see the industries of the Dominion so comprehensive as to embrace the conversion of all our raw products into finished goods. The population of New Zealand, and other circumstances, may be against the immediate realisation of this most laudable ideal, but the question arises, will it ever be within distance while the present indifference is shown to the welfare of our industries in the aggregate? It comes quite as a matter of course now for the farmers of this country to send away their 1 * merchandisejto the World, America, or elsewhere,

and for our merchants to look beyond the seas for their wares, i When business arrives at the "matter of course" stage it is always a bad Jthing f° r P ro ~ gress, and] it is for this reasonthat the of local be allowed

to crystallize too solidly Km present lines. "Discouragement ,ot industries" has really been, unfortunately,

the political attitude adopted by the New Zealand Legislature, for while it has very thoughtfully and very commendably improved materially the hours, wages, and general status of the worker, it has unhappily forgotten to balance, as it were, its good work, by providing the employer of labour—the man without whose money or brains, of both, as •the case may be, there would be no work for the worker—with considerations corresponding to the workers' benefits. The question of labour is now admittedly more than a mere side issue when the matter of our backward industries is under review, and if any proper steps are to be taken by the Government to'give industries an impetus, there is really no denying the fact that our present systems of wage defining and limiting will have to be remodelled from erid to end. Looking at the matter squarely, an unbiassed person must admit that position in New Zealand at present, as regards manufacturing's such that a prospective investor cannot see any reasonable distance ahead of him so far as his likely profits are concerned. Most such persons can probably see disaster, and so we stand stationary —almost as we were when the first fruits of our " advanced" labour legislation began to be enjoyed. Leaving this important branch of the subject, we pass on to another issue, and that is, the providing oi capital for industry were the labour laws to be recasted satisfactorily. It would be little advantage to New Zealand if industries were to be created for monopolistic purposes, so far as individual businesses were concerned. The system of profit-sharing, or co-operation, has built up on a magnificently selfreliant, dominating basis our dairy indmtry, and it is this same idea which should, from the outset of-any real attempts to make New Zealand a manufacturing country, be propagated to its most virile maturity. Co-operative freezing works, such as have been so successfully established in Nsw Zealand, also furnish us with a working model for all branches of industry where the handling of primary products is involved. Where the Government could assist, and where, we believe, it should assist, is in the encouragement, universally, of every proposed manufactory of a genuinely co-operative nature at its foundation by means of cheap money, until such business is able to rely on its own resources. This would be only carrying a stage further the principle embodied in the Advances to Settlers Act, and the subsidising of industries would really second the objects of that enactment. There are many questions of detail attached to such a suggestion, but these could be solved no doubt quite as satisfactorily as many cognate matters have been elucidated by wise legislators. We put it this way, as an hypothesis: If two hundred Masterton farmers said they would find £25 each to establish a woollen mill in the district, the Government could say, "Apply the co-operative principle in what we consider a reasonable measure to the concern and we will advance you such and such a sum towards the business, on debenture." This would be a very real inducement to industrial activity, and would achieve many most desirable commercial reforms. New Zealand, only needs an early start in the manufacturing business to give' her a commanding position in that respect in Australasia, as the same trade afflictions beset the Commonwealth as have

crippled our own advancement in the past. We must really check our present prodigality in regard to our mineral and general natural resources, and we must conserve tor succeeding generations of JNew Zealanders every advantage to be gained from the possession of such resources. The immediate benefits would be felt in this way, that when times of financial depression caused distress in the Oid World, New Zealand would not be nearly so liable to share that distress through the closing of the purses of monopolists who now buy her produce in bulk. The Dominion would, in short, be conducting a retail trade with countless ramifications, far too many to be shaken by the fluctuation of the price of wool, meat, or other produce. That this argument is based on substantial truths is one of the gx-eatest lessons of the present depression.