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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 5 (August 1, 1936)

To Protect Our Industries

To Protect Our Industries.

The machine inevitably has displaced labour, and the new Government, to counteract the effect of this increasing mechanisation of work, has adopted a policy of shortening hours and raising wages. Industry in New Zealand is to be protected against the products of cheap labour from overseas. Protective tariffs are not the only way, says the leader, therefore we must have agreements with the outside world, beginning with the British Commonwealth and gradually extending to other countries. The agreements must be based on sound economic principles for both parties to the agreement.

We cannot produce everything in New Zealand; we must take so much from abroad and pay for it with the surplus of that which we can produce in New Zealand. Higher wages but not too high, reasonable hours of work and reasonable leisure, fixed prices (so far as they can be fixed) and planned production; a fair share of the means of existence and of the comforts and some of the luxuries of life for all; no artificial booms for land and prices, and no preventable depression—that surely seems an ideal to which all political parties should subscribe.

For another thing, the easy and costly practice of delegating Ministerial authority to this Board and that has been reformed drastically. Already three unnecessary and expensive Boards have been abolished.

Mr. Savage and his colleagues stand for an improved order of society and industry which cannot by any stretch of imagination be called violently revolutionary. After all, economic security is the practical heaven for which everyone wishes, but to which far too few attain.