Engineering in New Zealand.

Progress, Volume VI, Issue 9, 1 July 1911, Page 718

Engineering in New Zealand.

® ir He who can make two ears of corn glow where one grew before is a benefactor to his race. ’ ‘‘ He who can double the product of his plant is equally a friend of mankind.” The .methods which increase product also increase profits and benefit mankind at the same time.” Engineering in New Zealand is not by any means what one could wish; cost of labour is high, and raw material is expensive, owing to the distance it has to be brought, and consequently the locally produced article is too high in price to compete successfully with the outside world. At the same time, if manufacturers would realise the benefits to be derived from labour-saving machinery, they would certainly not have so much cause to complain. Take the labour cost, and this has been pointed out to the writer as the chief trouble. What is to stop the manufacturer from using the up-to-date labour-saving machine tools that have been put on the market by the older countries? These tools are the outcome of very careful experiments, and are being used successfully in some of the largest engineering shops of the world, and what they are doing in those shops they will do for New Zealand. The employer often says ho has not enough for any further plant. He does not seem to realise that by throwing out his old, antiquated machinery and replacing it by modern tools his working expenses would be cut down by 25 per cent, to 50 per cent., and in some cases even more. The employer is too prone to consider the first cost and not look at the actual result, and, after all, it is the latter which counts.

Several firms are using “high speed” steel for their cutting tools, and some complain that they get very little better results than with ordinary tool steel. Probably not; their oldfashioned machines will not allow them to taite full advantage of the new steel. One manufacturer held up a piece of work of which he said the labour cost for machining was ninepenee, and considered that good. The same kind of work is being done in some English shops at a cost of not more than twopence; the difference in wages is not so much as that.

The use of labour-saving tools would benefit the worker as well as the employer, inasmuch as the better workman would be able to command a higher wage for increased production, while the indifferent workman would be weeded out; and how many indifferent workmen are in the workshops of the Dominion to-day drawing the same pay as first-class men? The ironmasters are agitating for an increased duty on imported machinery. Why not use modern tools and methods of production which would bring them larger profits (and this is what they are in business for) rather than wait for a duty which if levied would probably not benefit them. —CENSOR.