WELLINGTON NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 19 November 1930, Page 4

WELLINGTON NEWS

SUNSHINE TALK. (Special Correspondent). WELLINGTON, November 17. There are some people in the community who actually believe that by talking optimistically all the time the clouds of depression that envelop the whole civilised world will vanish. If we could banish depression in this simple manner we could smile at depression. It is a question whether these optimists are doing'a good service to the country. Some people are obsessed with the idea that optimism is the patent safe cure for all ills. Just now it is necessary to put optimism temporarily in the background and give prominence to that other virtue—courage, which appears to he sadly lacking. There is a right way and a wrong way of dealing with our economic adversities, the former requires courage the latter does not, consequently all that has been done so fai\ has tended to hinder rather than help revise the trade. Those possessed with optimism and who make a public parade of it are wont to declare that the eoiwtrv experienced a slump in 1920-21 and soon got over that and so it will again. But these people forget that conditions now differ entirely from the circumstances which obtained at that period. In Europe reams of paper money was afloat, the United States was booming, ■ tourists from that country were spending millions of money on the Con? tinent of Europe, the devastated areas were being rebuilt, Australia and N°w Zealand borrowed millions for soldier settlement, for housing, for advances to settlers and workers, for railway construction, hydro-electric stations and what not. Wool, butter, cheese, meat were all selling at top prices, and so of course the slump of 1920-21 disappeared very quickly. An orgy of extravagance squashed that slump, but the present slump is very different. It is the swing back of the pendulum from that orgy of extravagance and the present slump cannot be cured as the last was because the existing circumstances are very different.

ihe present is a genuine dyed-in-the-wool slump and shouting optimism from the house tops and radiating sunshine talk will not help us. We have to make up our minds that low prices for our export products will continue so long as our customers from overseas are lacking in purchasing power. It is on these export products wool, meat, butter and. cheese, hides, skins and tallow that provide us with the national, dividend, ~and we must endeavour to extract profits for those products at their present prices. Some of the sunshine talkers, although they do not actually say so, seem to indicate that produce prices will again reach high figures of two or three years back. There is no immediate prospect of this, at most the hope of men of affairs in the larger centres i„s that commodity prices hay© reached the bottom. Optimists with their talk and platitudes obscure the point, which is very harmful, What the country needs just now is sanity' and courage, sanity to ohoose the right economic course and courage to pursue that course to the bitter end. and if that could be achieved optimism would follow automatically. Mr Will Appleton, the Managing Director of the Charles Haines Advertising Agency is, if one may say, so,, a super-optim-ist, and in his many recent addresses he has told his hearers that things would be all right soon, which is a very -safe prediction. Last week he addressed the Opt mistic Club in AVellington and of course his address in an ultra-optimistic strain. He gave some instances in justifieateion of his optimism. Both the optimist and the pessimist can find plenty of examples and instances to support their respective views. Just now the country does not require the services of optimists or pessimists,, but requires the help of thinking men who will survey our present conditions in a sane and sensible way, face facts and tell us the results. Sunshine talk is very pleasant to listen to but it gets us nowhere. So far we have done nothing. The Government has done nothing beyond adding to our taxation burden and saddling us with the unemployment tax, thus further adding to costs, which shrewd men say we must reduce. In the long run costs will be reduced but we will have to suffer a great deal more before that problem is tackled.