A TRADE REVIEW

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 82, 31 December 1920, Page 6

A TRADE REVIEW

ENGLISH CONDITIONS RETURNING TO NORMAL 1 t GERMANY AS SHE IS \ . i VIEWS OF VISITOR FROM BIRMINGHAM • . Among the visitors from England at j ' present in New Zealand is Mr. ~T- L. . Elliott, of the Birmingham hardware , • firm of T. L. Ellioilt and Co., a company ; whose business extends almost through- ( out the Empire. Mr. Elliott Inst visited , the' Dominion, in 1913, and was held up in Wellington during - the watersido strike o£ thaii year. During the wa.r f period Birmingham had to divert its at- ( tention to the Empire's most urgent needs, but such necessities aro now filings of tho past, and Birmingham, indeed all England, is getting back : to normal. ( "England has been very sick," said Mr. Elliott vesterday, "nnd whilst slio is still a little feverish, she is now con- . ralescenii. Whon I left England sugar ( and butter were the oiily commodities , ' being rationed. There was any quantity of meat, particularly New Zealand _ ilk. meat, which was selling at a price vory below that of a year previous. It .. is a commentary, on the changed conditiona to know that the working classes . were buying the better class (British) beef, and the middle class —tho salaried people—were the 1 consumers of imported . frozen meat. There appeared to be iplenty of butter at a price—English wns A fetching ss. per lb., and Government (imported) 3s. 6d. per lb. 'Most probably •: there will bo a general fall in pricewhen "• all butter comes in free,'and rationing . ceases altogether." .. j Referring to conditions generally in England, Mr- Elliott said that ft good K v deal was read in the papers of New Zeaft land about the trend in» England that X was hardly justified by fae'lj. Burning-, j.' • ham was a very largo manufacturing city, but there wns J'.o trace of Bolshev-tS^.jsip-,there as far as he was aware. The centres of;7al>our discontent were Irish workers on the Clyde and the mi'flers of South* Wales. In t<ho case , of tho former, they were probably act-j-i-ing in harmony with the disturbing element in their own country, whilst the Celtic temperament! had a good deal to , answer .for. Tkv.'h would in time get t back to where they were. By that lie jri ;'nieant that with the average workers in .'England high wages had moanil high spending—a very small percentage had made hay whilst the sun shone. Furf;;;,;.; thermore, manufacturers all over Eng- ; . land had long since found out that tho r higher tlio, wages tho less the output. '•' That sort ,of thing remedied itself in > time, for as the price of goods soared the demand grow less, and manufactories .?•< had to close down; so that, really, tho -V-'.Volution of the cost-of-living problem'was iS 1 ' lA 'to reduce wages,, as increase.of wages ||;; l 'only served to increase the cosil of living. ?"v-: Birmingham's Trade. F : '.v Am far as hardwij/e goods—Birmingham v"; ware—were concerned, thore was no pros- . ; * '•'• pect of a fall in prices for soveral months i ;to come. The orders in hand were numerous, and so far tho works had been ; "..kept on short commons as-far as coal and raw materials were concerned, lie could safely say that there had been •t ••'••no 6lmnp, and that with the exception "of articles of luxury, such as jewellery, "there had been no great reduction in - prices. There had been experienced a shortage of labour for the dirtier classes of work, such as grinding and polishing, •• because tho men had been for a' time - nble to pick and choose their work. ■ ; This had retarded the output in certain : cases, edged tools generally in pnrticuwhole Birmingham, with ■ the rest of manufacturing England, was '•'•" picking up. A Peep at Germany, " In April last' Mr. Elliott obtained ' • /permission to visit Germany,, in company with another English manufacturer. ' People, ho explained, are noi allowed to enter or leave Germany except under official permission, Germany . did not want visitors because she had quite enough to do to. feed herself, and , one had to be on business of some kind to enter the country. Frankfort and that belt of country was still held by the French and Cologne by the British, but further than that no ordinary tourist was permitted to, venture. ' "The conditions' in Germany," nam 1' Mr. Elliott, "were particularly distressing—there was no coal, no food, lho 1 people were living on a starvation dhH, and cases of malnutrition were painfully evident. All the German manufacturers ~ complained of the difficulty they weiss in getting raw material, f^ v ' r ['hey had been able to got a certain w quantity from America 'but it was in. f. • finitesimal compared with the demand, f Germany only produces iron and a 6inall W- -quantity of aluminium, and when she wanted copper she found that it cost her fc-' JJIOOO per ton (the mark having depre- . ciatcd to a tenth of its former value). 'The labour conditions there are worse ;*hnn they are in England, and the only h* thing Germany has got is labour. Other U j nations might have been induced to help her, but notlitng ts stable. WiC 'can yotf do with a country, which has P six distinct Socialist parties, and they k >v no means exhaust the political '< • ■fitrenzth of the land? Germany was unk doubtedly biting the dust, and her ap- | >■ f peal to the Allies for a review oi the f "'■• Treaty of Versailles, as tar as the lviiln ' "' Valley coal clauses were concerned was . made in sheer necessity, as the Jf,'/ ' Valley coal is the nations life blood.

No War Indemnity Tax. i So fat as Mr. Elliott could see, no > steps had been taken to impose a tax I- to meet the war indemnities. lheie / wor™ war taxes, of course, but none (•'. gnecially 'designed to belp to pay the &■: b?c indemnities. Not that there was no ' wealth in Germany. There was a good '• deal of latent wealth yet to draw upon c ' <: in that' country. The glory of Beilin v-:," P , "f ß nn.Tted It lpokcd like a eecond- , (J wn very drab through want oi m Stand'Jpafrs. A lot of the shops N had broken windows and wcie cmp j, f- j +l, ft Unter den Linden was but a j| shadow of its former neatness aud spien--1 Rubber is now low in but it k shU too expensive for tho Germans ' Mr Elliott saw in Berlin motor-cars with wood blocks Affixod to the wheels in place or rubber lyres. Jso outor rim or hoop bound the blocks together-the cars so fitted 'simply used tho blocks as the running surface. He also 6a T,P c °V riding bicycles without tyres. Ibe Mibstitute were stetil coil springs placed nt more or less regular intervals round the Tim of the wheel. The "bier gnrtens were usually full, but not with the o d pay crowds of pre-war days; these were men who drank to drown thoir sorrow, or, at any rate, to lift the general depression.

The Depreciated Mark. | , - The day of cheap Inlxmr was gono in Germany and so she -was less likely to be a serious rival in trade than she was "before the war. The working man jot about 300 marks a week, instead of P 25 before the war, but even that sum : • only meant 305., as the mark hnd de--1 predated to a tenth of its former value. » ... A rough, ready-made suit cost GOO mark?, ' '• niul a made-to-ordcr suit 3000 marks. fi .One man Mr. Elliott knew had pnid ■ '5800 marks for a mnde-to-order suit, t. Workmen's boots cost about. 200 marks fVy a pair. r . Jfr. Elliott. said that he experienced ' no difficulty in getting butter and other r tln'nwlit. a ' price. Ho found that, the fits- Yeiiornl attitude towards England was [' vch' favourable, possibly because the .Lc.; (lint only through Englend r ■ Germany bono to reinstate herself. f j[ a could not see lioiy b wjis possible

for Germany to recover in less than five years' .time, and it might l>ft twenty years before she would got back lo the plnce she held in. trade prior to the war. "The military caste is badly out of fashion," eaid Mr. Elliott. "I never saw a German officer tlio whole time I was there. The only uniforms I saw at. all wero thos9 worn by tho Security Police, a kind of military polico for the preservation of law and order.

No Dumping of Goods. "Ono tiling I would liko to say is that there is no dumping- of goods as fnr as British manufacturers aro concerned. . The imports were heavy, but thoy wcro goods that had been ordered and were now coming; to hand. If an importer ordered four or six times the quantity of goods needed, the manufacturer, could not be held to blamo when he fulfilled those orders at tho first opportunity. In our own caso wo asked our customers with two nnd three-year-old orders on hand if they wished us to supply, nnd 80 per cent, of them replied in • the affirmative. It will bo found that 'dump' and, 'slump' expressions are coming more from America tlian England, especially as regarded sou goods. In any case Great Britain's trade with . Australasia is a. very small part, of her .total export trade. In 1913 only 8J per cent, of England's exports came tp Australasia, and, taking the Board of Trade's figures for tho second quarter of 1920, Australasia only accounted for 6 per cent, of Britain's export trade. Incidentally, tho value of Ivor exports - for that quarter was X3)2,000,000. Buy British Goods! "Pooplo out here do not seem to realise that by purchasing from the United States they are helping to appreciate the dollar and depreciate the sovereign, yet such is the case,. for every article of American manufacture purchased means a lessened demand for the British article, and enhances the price of the latter,, which in turn, increases the general <ost of living. If ever there was a time when the overseas Dominions should buy British goods it is the present. By buying goods from the United States they are helping to maintain the adverse exchange rate, so trade with the States is not only unpatriotic, but uneconomical in the long run." Mr., Elliott said that New Zealand should lk very cautious in what she did when reconstructing her Customs tariff year, particularly when it came to the imposition of protective tariffs against British in fnvour of local nianufuotures. "for example," he said, 'picking up a curtain pin, -"a man might want protection for manufacturing a thing like this ami get it,, when wo can turn out enough l of them in ono day to do New Zealand for a year. In considering matters of tho kind, all eule.i of tho question should bo most carefully, inquired into lest !)9 per cent, of the people be penalised for the benefit of the other 1 per cent. . . . Australia lias gone in for a high protective tariff, to encourage lior industries, with the result that the steamers are coming out half empty, and will have to double the freight charges on Australia's primary products Homeward to make the round trio >»y. Moreover, a .manufacturing country means congested cities and a desertion of the land, and the last thing New Zealand wishes to see, I imagine, is tho population deserting the country for the towns. England has found out what that has meant to her in stamina. On the other hand, we want your products; we don't

wish to bo dependent on the United States as we are; and as we are willing to Ibuy all you can produce we look to you to purchase our goods, anil foster, not hinder, our great industries."