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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Canterbury Provincial District]

Trade And The Outlook

Trade And The Outlook.

The position of Christchurch relative to the rest of the province makes it naturally a great distributing centre. Its close connection by rail with almost every township within the provincial limits has encouraged the small farmers, as well as the large runholders to transmit produce and to import goods through the capital; and its position with reference to the chief seaport in the province has confirmed its commercial pre-eminence. The figures quoted elsewhere prove that through Christchurch passes the greater part of the provincial trade, both for export and import.

It has been shown that Canterbury is a great agricultural and pastoral district. The commerce of the city is based most largely upon the productivity of the country. Without wheat, wool, and frozen meat, Christchurch would have never been more than a poor struggling township, for though the list of manufactures is yearly increasing, the city has no natural advantages in position or mineral resources that would make it a great manufacturing centre. The prosperity of the town is based upon that of the country. No one who has not watched the city carefully on market days, and gained some adequate knowledge of the enormous volume of trade done by and with the Canterbury farmers, can have any idea of the importance of the country districts to the capital. Nearly all the greatest commercial institutions—the Grain Agency, the Loan and Mercantile, the Kaiapoi Woollen Company, the Farmers' Cooperative, the Belfast Meat Company, the Islington Meat Company—with the numerous smaller houses indirectly connected with them—are based upon the staple products of the soil of Canterbury. The commerce of Christchurch thus depends for activity and steadiness upon the success of the agricultural and pastoral industries. Even when these are suffering from temporary depression, the effect upon commerce is never so sudden or so overwhelming as the depression caused by the collapse of a speculative or even a manufacturing boom. Hence Christchurch has suffered less than most colonial cities from sudden and unexpected commercial disasters.

Speculation in mining has seldom spread so far in Christchurch as to seriously interfere with the ordinary course of trade. The experiences of Otago, Auckland, and the West Coast have been reflected, but faintly, in the commercial annals of Christchurch. For while a good deal of money has at various times been locked up in Otago dredges, Auckland reefs and West Coast sluicing claims—not to mention Mount Lyell and Broken Hill—Canterbury has always been saved from desperate straits by the permanence and solidity of those industries, on which her prosperity has from the first been deeply founded. The only great speculative mania that ever overwhelmed Canterbury was the land boom of the seventies; and even the excess to which the desire for landed investment ran was due to an exaggerated estimate of the profits to be drawn from the soil.

It would be a mistake to infer that Christchurch has no important manufacturing industries. The great public works policy, involving railroads and bridges, caused the growth of two of the greatest iron-founding firms in the colonies—Anderson's and Scott Bros.'. The importance of improved farming encouraged the development of such manufacture as those of Andrews and Beaven page 64 and Booth and Macdonald. In the foundries and workshops of these firms work is done that could hardly be surpassed in its own class in England or America. Apart from these, the many industries referred to in other sections of this work have naturally grown up as accessory to the comforts, the needs, and the luxuries of a large and wealthy city. But in spite of their scope and profitable nature, it may still be maintained that they are dependent for success upon the great farming interests which dominate the whole province. Only one trade seems inclined to attach itself in a specialised sense to the city— that of tanning, with its attendant trade of bootmaking; and here again it must be admitted that this trade would never have expanded as it has done if the province had not been well adapted to the rearing of cattle. Still, all this must not blind the observer to the fact that the factories of Canterbury which are situated most largely in and near Christchurch employ about 10,500 operatives, and produce manufactures worth about £3,000,000 per annum.

The future of the city, regarded commercially, is unmistakably bright. Wheat, wool, and frozen meat are necessaries of life to the world at large. It would be hard to fix a limit to the productiveness of the province in these particulars; and the prosperity of the country means, for Christchurch far more than for any other provincial centre, the commercial activity and success of the capital. The irrigation of the plains will add vastly to the productive power of the country districts. The employment of the enormous motive force now running to waste in the Waimakariri will provide unimagined facilities for commerce, and for the prosecution of manufactures on a scale which it has been hitherto impossible to attempt. The position of Christchurch will make it more and more definitely the great distributing centre of the island; and this relative superiority will be confirmed by the completion of the West Coast and Blenheim railways. Freedom from, mining speculation will assure the steady and uniform progress of the city; and Christchurch can with confidence look forward to a future even brighter and more prosperous than the past.

Welcoming the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall: June, 1901.

Welcoming the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall: June, 1901.