Feilding Star. SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1883. The Commercial Depression.

Feilding Star, Volume IV, Issue 12, 7 July 1883, Page 2

Feilding Star. SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1883. The Commercial Depression.

-*yThb present year of onr Lord. 1883, bids fair to be known in the annals ot New Zealand as the year of universal depression. It is not that there is anything like a grand commercial crash to be recorded, or a series of gigantic failures at Home and abroad involving in their tram -the beggary and ruin of families, the sudden arrest of manufactoring enterprise, or the premature cutting off of legitimate trade. Nor has the Colony to face a condition of want or distress among the wage-earning class, or deal, a3 was the case four or five yesrs ago, with a large body of men actually unable to procure employment of any sort whatever. The increased demand for labor on the land, and the curtailment of general emigration, have removed more than one unpleasant problem from the Colony, and, in particular, have done much to prevent that unwholesome tendency on the part of unskilled laborers to stagnate in towns instead of seeking work in the country. But, for all thia, the the Colonial Treasurer finds it his duty to gloomily place on rec rd in his Financial Statement that this is a time of commercial depression, though he regards it as only of a temporary character, and considers thai we suffer from it in New Zealand in common with the rest of the world- 'I here is not the least necessity to dive into a Financal Statement to discover that the pocket 3of individuals and ot the community are alike depressed. Of half a dozen sentences which business men exchange when they meet in the public street, there is hardly a single word but lamentations over the bad times, and the little prosppct there is •>! things mending. Whatever political economists may say about the matter, there is remarkably little money in circulation, and the fortunes, not only of many men, but of actual communities in this Colony aeem to be built up entirely upon paper. Paying cash for value received is an almost extinct practice, and the only branch of the colonial revenue whioh is likely to still maintain a rosy and elastic aspect is the sale of bill stamps- We do not go so far as to say that society is resolving itself again into its primitive and barbaric elements, and that commercial transactions will henceforth be conducted upon a system of barter, varied occasionally by a few coins and bank notes that will be looked v on as curiosities pertaining tv a bi.ssful

state ot r.x is tenet: which nothing but, a vivid imagination can realise. But < the condition of things iv some parts of the Colony is fust verging upon • entire suspension of cash payments, and upoo v system in which commercial transact ious form a vicious circle, in wbioh nobody pays anybody anvthinu, and everybody is distinctly the poorer for the process. Let us illustrate this by an example of everyday dealings in many parts of the Colony, but fortunately not in Feilding. A is a workman, employed by B, and A, instead of receiving his wages in cash at regular and proper intervals according to the good old plan, lias to run accounts ior the necessaries of life, wbich xccounts are sent in to IJ, who either settles them in cash or by another set of contra accounts, or elso (wiiich is not an uncommon practice) includes them in the statement of liabilities which he files in tbe Bankruptcy Court. But, charitably assuming that B pays his workman's bills, instead of paying his wages in cash, there is. still a distinct and great injury done to A by the process ; for, instead of going to market with money in his haud and taking, advantage of cheap ouportunities, he has to run into debt, pay dearer for his goods, and becomes absorbed into that ocean of credit that bids fair to swamp tbe Colony. This question being of so much importance, w*> will resume it agaiu in a future article.