AMERICA’S ORGY OF SPENDING.

Hokitika Guardian, 3 July 1920, Page 4

AMERICA’S ORGY OF SPENDING.

SIGNS OF A RETURN TO REASON.

The war-worn orgy of extravagance in America i* beginning to wane. Reports are coming in (says a New York despatch of April 3jd) showing that the reckless spending which began about the time the United States entered the war is diminishing greatly in the Eastern States, including New York City. In the west and south spendthrift ways are still at high tide, but this is explained by the fact that those- parts of the country delayed turning on the golden shower until some time after the east had started. .Manufacturers are finding it difficult to interest buyers any more in their highest grade wares. The stoppage of reckless purchasing by easterners is accepted as a warning throughout the country that soon every district will cease to hand over whatever amount profiteers may like to charge. Shops large and small are fearful that they will lie caught with heavy stocks of expensive goods which nobody will take. THE TOLL OF LUXURY. It has been considered impossible by economists that America .could long continue the rapidly-mounting expenditures which marked the past year. Nothing in American history has shown anything to approach the.mad fury of spending in which nearly all people have engaged. Statistics have just been published by .the Government showing the extraordinary increase in luxury expenditure last year over the preceding' 12 months. Thus in 1.5)19 America’s bill for theatres was £101,588,491, against £52,715,677 for the previous year. Americans speiit £278,604,547 oil motor cars last year, against £191,850,146 in 1918, while for musical instruments and sporting goods, which the Government returns link together, they amounted to £21,648,839 in 1919. Cosmetic prefumes, and other toilet preparations cost £34,990,383 last year, as compared with £19,789,450 the year before.

These figures arc representative of many others, all showing enormous advances in last year’s spending over 1918. Profits of manufacturers, as reported in Government returns, show extraordinary increases proportionate to the spending mania that the war brought to America. A random glance through the Government’s figures reveals the following representative increases in not profits for 1919 over 1918 Endieott-Johnson Corporation, shoe manufacturers, 101 per cent. Cluett, Peabody, and Co., shirt and collar manufacturers, 84 per cent. United Drug Company, manufacturing chemists, 70 per cent. Pacific Mills, cotton manufacturers, 35 per cent. TURN OF THE TIDE. It is estimated that since the signing of the armistice the American public have spent £1,700,000,000 “ indulgently,” as it is called. That is to say, the money has gono for articles not serving any necessary or utility purposes. But an end is coming to this enormous extravagance. Inquiries along Fifth Avenue, Now York's Bond street, have revealed the fact that fashionable women drive up to shops in their motor cars, attended by liveried footmen, and after ,

pricing goods in the shops, retire without inuking purchases, to search for dumper articles elsewhere. it is the direct antithesis of shopping' ways of last year. Then, a woman on a purchasing expedition would never ask the price, unless to inquire whether there was not something more expensive she could buy. An end has now conic to the practice of shopkeepers to advalico prices as a measure of sell-delonce in order to keep the trade of people who judged quality exclusively by the price charged. The spring season, Government experts declare, is destined to see an important fall in prices. By next winter, it is believed, all America wiV have fallen back on a more normal style of living after the delirium of war extravagance.