PROSPERITY COMING

Hokitika Guardian, 27 October 1931, Page 8

PROSPERITY COMING

“GO AND MEET IT.” BUSINESS GOES ON. Amongst those who do. not believe in sitting down with folded hands and bewailing the present hard times is Mr E. A. Beverley, managing director of the Texas Company, Australia, who is on a visit to New Zealand. He divides business men of to-day into two classes, one of which says that things couldn’t be worse, while the other says that things might be worse. “The latter class,” remarked Mr Beverley, “‘has taken its coat off, and is working three times harder than it ever did before, and it is showing results. These men have faith in the immediate future. They know that prosperity is coming again. All the signs point to the fact ■ that it is-even closer than we think. Then lot us not huddle together in gloom,, waiting for prosperity to come. Let u,s consolidate our forces and go out to meet it.” Quoting the story of a famous general, who, when it was reported to him that the enemy was attacking strongly all along the line, said: “Very well, we will advance!” Mr Beverley

went on to say: “There is a law of life that is also a Law of business —one must go either j forward or backward, there is no 'standing still. Man must have work. . Even if lie makes' wealth ! enough to give up that labour by which he made , liis wealth, Nature is inexorable. Unless that individual finds other work for his hands and His brain to do, stagnation and decay are inevitable. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort, who has' those virile qualities micesary to win in the ' strain and strife of actual life.’’ “The situation calls for men of vis

j ion and courage. Twelve months ago, practically all businesses were in a j prosperous state: To-day such is not the case. Yet a great many seem to j forget that crisises have come before in ; this, as in other countries, and the . people have triumphed, and prosperity has come again. All through this crisis,! ■ while a great number of men have in tlie, words of Shakespeare, ‘troubled deaf Heaven with their bootless cries I others; looking ahead arid seeing the attacks on all fronts, have given the order to advance. They have attacked, j arid while they may not havh made 1, great, deal of progress, at least they have consolidated their forces, main , tained their ground, and when ‘.the I time is propitious will be the firat to go forward to new and lugger e's.” ’ j "“In times of depression, a great | number of businessmen seem to forget that the population must be fed, that millions of families must still buy food a»d drink'; men and women must have clothes ; schoolchildren, too, must he equipped ; industry must go on with its demand for materials of all kinds; coal must he dug from the. earth; mot. ors-cnrs and trucks in hundreds of thousands must continue to run; petrol and oil must he consumed; tires must wear out. Amidst all the wide-: spread upheaval, a great demand has still tr> he met. The great danger is 1 hat depression can become a disease called ‘repression’, whereby the community, badly directed, will, through fear 0 f the future, cease to spend that normal proportion of their earnings on the things of life which they-need, and which they are, even under present cireumstances, able to afford.” j cgiiiuutmsmiamr^naamxm