The Wanganui Chronicle. SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1944. THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 88, Issue 6, 8 January 1944, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1944. THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY

’’pHE control of industry during wartime may be justified on the ground of urgent, necessity, but it is not logical to argue from this justification that controls should be continued in peacetime. The world is changing rapidly, new products are being prepared, new materials are becoming available, new demands will have to be met. These new conditions ean only be met by people who are prepared to take risks. Those who take risks want, to back their own judgment and they want a reward for their risk-taking. Without the risk-takers being allowed to operate under reasonably free conditions progress must inevitably be slowed down. No Government department is capable of acting with initiative and no bureaucratic controller will engage in risk-taking, hence the Government controlling agency must necessarily be a retarding influence in the development of progress. Because a man believes in castor oil for some purposes it should not be necessary for him to defend himself against the charge of advocating a diet of that oil alone. The man who advocates the freedom of industry should not be asked to defend the proposition that industry should be freed from all controls whatsoever. Those who seek to remove the matter into the realm of extreme propositions do a disservice, to the community because there are no extremists holding such views that (natter in the Dominion. Nobody is asking for the absolute freedom of industry any more than they are asking for absolute freedom of action in any other sphere. There are certain restrictions which have been adopted by the community for decades. The Weights and Measures Act. the Pure Foods Act, factory legislation for the protection of workers from industrial accidents, the industrial awards settled by agreement or by the Court of Industrial Arbitration—all are in the nature of restrictions upon industry, actually operating to suppress those industries and production units which cannot conform to them. This may be an advantage or a disadvantage, but the community takes the view that it is better to leave the unpaying industries alone and concentrate upon others, despite any advantage which may accrue to either indviduals or to the community as a whole by having sweated industries existing in the community. There are some restrictions, however, which, although of wartime birth, will have to continue into the future because of the continuance of the same necessity which brought about their introduction. If. for instance, butter must be exported 1o the full to feed the people of the United Kingdom on their present rationed basis, rationing will have to continue in New Zealand. That would simply be the fulfilling of the Dominion’s war obligations. To justify their continuance controls must, operate to ensure a more equitable and more efficient utilisation of resources and through such action create wider opportunities for a more real freedom for all. Those controls which are justifiable on these grounds will continue to exist while they so serve.

Where raw materials become available and their working up will provide employment for workers and goods for consumers, it would be the height of folly to continue the operation of controls of such raw materials for a day longer than necessity demands. It is good that Mr. S. G. Holland has taken up the task of educating the public for a rational reduction of restrictions on industry as the necessity for such controls eeases to exist. The post-war world ean only be met by innovations, by the exercise of initiative, and by the taking of risks. If present conditions continue after the necessity for them has ended, then the risk-takers will cease to blaze the trail in New Zealand industry, or they will depart for other lands where their enterprise is more welcome. New Zealand will then sink to a low level of productive capacity and this, press ing upon the now profitable industries, will bring about their eon traction. Unemployment will be rife and there will not be a full Treasury for the Government to make merry with as the present Government did prior to the war in order to create a favourable atmosphere in which to contest the 1938 General Election. If political considerations are to remain the dominant considerations then the people of New Zealand will have to learn by the same bitter experience as taught the peoples of Newfoundland and Mexico that eating the seed corn instead of planting it inevitably leads to starvation.