WANGANUI WOOLLEN MILL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 290, 6 December 1929, Page 7

WANGANUI WOOLLEN MILL

Sir, —Mr G. F. Moore’s practical article re the above industry, appearing in your issue of even date merits the fullest supplementary evidence, so may I be allowed to butt in. Wanganui people are now about to partake of their own medicine inasmuch as they played an important part in returning a unit of the present Government to the Treasury benches. New Zealand’s tariff has always been regarded politically as a revenue producing machine, and in that capacity it has been a wonder.

In 1927 New Zealand paid £5 14s a head in customs duties (per capita they are the world’s biggest importers), beating the Australian average by 12s 4d, the Canadian by 46s Bd, and that of the United States citizen by £4 14s. Three of the oldest established manufacturing industries —woollens, footwear and tanning employ fewer hands now than they did five years ago, and show a marked falling off in the value of their products. More late-ly-established industries have made very slow headway, despite the fact that the Dominion is blessed with an abundance of cheap hydro-electric power, and the workers in the Dominion are not bitten by the strike-bug very often. New Zealand has a population not very much bigger than that of Sydney, natural resources that riyal, in fact, excel those of any Australian State, and a rainfall that is the envy of her less fortunate big sister across the Tasman.

In such circumstances it ought not to be necessary to talk about closing down woollen mills and the sequel of further unemployment at all, if the New Zealand people would curb their mania for importation, and adjust their tariff so as to give their own manufacturing industries a fighting chance. Wanganui has already initiated a Development League, evidently to cover up the shortcomings of their representative. It now behoves the section of the community in the district that are affected directly and indirectlv, by not being represented by a practical man to form another league doubly as strong, that will expose the ruinous tactics of administrators that do not know which side of a bullock the most hair grows on. JOSEPH CARWARDINE,