TRADE IN AMERICA

Hokitika Guardian, 27 August 1931, Page 6

TRADE IN AMERICA

EFFECT OF DEPRESSION

TEN” MILLION UNEMPLGTED

y WELLINGTON, August 25,

An opinion that America was suffering as much,''or even more than any other counti’y as a result of the depression was expressed by Mr J. Ellis, a business man ot Wellington, who returned by the from San Francisco. Mr Ellis said that the wheat Yarmers in Canada and the United States were finding it very difficult to “‘keep, their heads above water.’ It was costing them almost as much to produce the wheat as they got for it. The market price for wheat when Mr -Ellis left the country was forty cents a bushel, and unless a man was farming in, a- big way he could scarcely make a living. “They are very optimistic about an early recovery, but I don't see how that is possible when there are nearly 10,000,000- unemployed in the whole counti’y,” said Mr EllisGiving an example of how trade in * America has been affected by the depression, Air Ellis said that dining a petrol war in California recently petrol was being sold at five cents a gallon, including a tax of three cents, so that the consumer was paying about Id pelgallon, for the. spirit itself. Some of the service stations in Los Angeles were filling up the petrol tanks of. the

cars for nothing providing the motori ist purchased oil. ’‘There is no rms- / take about it, the country is in a bad way,” concluded Air Ellis.