WAR AND COMMERCE.

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 321, 23 May 1894, Page 2

WAR AND COMMERCE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR. Sir, — Your correspondent " Contributor " has tried to draw a red herring across the track when he says I tendered advice to the local stock-raisers in my last letter. This is a deliberate misrepresentation of the case. I queried the truth of the common cry " over production " in its general and world wide sense ; but I intimated I was willing to allow there was such a thing as local over production, and I quoted as an instance that inferior ewes and lambs are almost going a-begging at the present time in this district, but that cobby fat wethers are in great request. I said "The remedy is patent and I need not enlarge on it." I left it to the stock-raisers themselves, and I tendered no advice. So much for " Contributor's" accuracy, who ignores what T have written and intimated about the directors and other* connected with the banks and money institutions in Australia having made ducks and drakes of many thousands of pounds of money belonging to shareholders and depositors. This is where the money has gone, and where it wilMiave to go for some time to come, thereby crippling the settlers over the length and breadth of the colony, and preventing many of them from employing surplus labor. If money had been lent by these defaulting banks and institutions on one of j the principles of the Credit Fonder of France, viz., — " That loans shall only be granted upon properties producing a durable and certain revenue, such revenue exceeding the amount of the yearly repayment to be made by the borrower ;" then there would have been no banking crisis in Australia, or tightness of the money market in New Zealand at the present time. I am, etc., George Wilks. P.S. — For v Contributor's" information I may state that there is a total of £6,249,806 to be paid up by shareholders of the Banks in Australia in from eighteen months to six years' time. He doubtless knows what calls are made by the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company. — G.W. Feilding, May 21st, 1894.