SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 1 April 1915, Page 2

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

A New York firm gives its opinion on the war in a circular to its customers in the following terms :—" It has caused five hundred millions of people to begin to save even their potato peelings. It has caused two hundred million people in Russia to be sober, all at one time, a thing that has never happened in this world before. It has caused you and your neighbour in this country to reduce household expenses and stop spending money on unneceesary things. It has suddenly checked the waste of capital by individuals, by corporations, and by the Government, for even the Government is seized with a spirit of economy. Of course, there is much unemployment in consequence, and some of the re-adjustments are painful, but the economic effect will bo wonderfully beneficial, and the ratio of productive to unproductive labour, in the economic sense, will be higher afterwards. Under all its disabilities we dare say the world to-day is saving capital faster than before the war started. It was saving very little before. The trouble economically was that the world's expenditure had over-run its ability to save, hence the rise in the price of capital every wherein the last few years. Nobody can predict with certainty what the economic effects of the war will be, but here are things to think about."