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Hokitika Guardian, 15 August 1930, Page 4

That world conditions are very similar nil round the globe is indicated in a late London message. Lord Melcliett, who has been attending a world nitrogen conference at Osteiul, says in a communication, to the press that the economic position appears very much the same everywhere. A large proportion of the public are accumulating bank deposits, and there is a reduction in the purchase of shares. “It is not really that trade is So bad,” he says, “hut that confidence in industry is tremendously shaken. It seems to me that the time has come when responsible captains of industry, more especially responsible editors of the press, should distinctly set their faces against pessimism and defeatism, which is all part of the huge hear movement, and which has no real justification either here, or in America. If every day the front pages of the Daily Express and Daily Mail are filled with enormous headlines about crashes on Wall street and graphic pictures of some wretched margin riierchant having interviews with his broker, and expressing further gloomy doubts as to the future—which from what I can gather are not really justified—it is sinjply adding to the general sense of depression, not merely in-America, but in our securites, and entirely hampering the revival of British industry. After all, most English people have no shares in America at all, and surely .we .really want to encourage them to invest their money in the Empire, and not in -Wall street. “By giving enormous prominence all the time to the bad points and ignoring a lot of the good points in connection with the revival of industry in the Old Country, and stressing the frenzied speculation in America, it seems to me that an infinite amount of harm is being done. Tt must counteract any effort which is being made by people like myself in the direction'l ha ve indicated. As a matter of fact, when you look at the difference in the prices of shares, although, of course, they have been sagging, there is nothing so terribly sensational about the position so' far as Wall street is concerned. Tint there is a colossal atmosnhere of terrific impending doom which is being continually created"for everybody’s breakfast and which, T find, reflects itself in the activities of all. kinds of people. Further, it shakes confidence, as I have pointed out. These remarks though in n different view, are akin to those of our Chief Justice, who the other day deprecated sensationalism in the press in relation to crime. Equally in the same way, sensationalism in business affairs is to be avoided. The world needs a clearer outlook, and it should not be dimmed by magnifying failures, hut rather point to possible betterment.