The Feilding Star, Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published. Daily FRIDAY, NOV. 29, 1895. WHY TRADE IS BAD.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 129, 29 November 1895, Page 2

The Feilding Star, Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published. Daily FRIDAY, NOV. 29, 1895. WHY TRADE IS BAD.

— — 0 The Tlapier Telegraph in analysing the causes of the depression in trade, groups them under three heads. Those are the fall in the prices of our products in the markets of the world ; . the feeling of insecurity caused by the Government's attacks upon the principle of private property coupled with their vague threats to still further turn the screw ; and our alarming indebtedness as a people. We are not sure that the last item is not entitled to be considered the most misohievious in ita results, because its effects are most permanent. To put the matBer broadly, six hundred and sixty thousand of vs s leckoning from the tottering old man, awaiting his final summons, downwards to the last baby born, are jointly responsible for a public debt of forty million pounds. We do not know how many actual breadwinners are included in that six hundred and sixty thousand, but probabiy at the outside not .more than a hundred and fifty thousand. Put the number at two hundred thousand-. On the shoulders of these is tied the burdens not only of our forty millions of public debt, but also that of all tbe mortgages and all the municipal loans. How can it be expected that a small community hampered in that way should, be prosperous? The taxation of this colony is the highest per head of any country in the world.