Manawatu Standard. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West Coast. WEDNESDAY, MAY 14, 1884. CAUSE AND EFFECT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IV, Issue 141, 14 May 1884, Page 2

Manawatu Standard. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West Coast. WEDNESDAY, MAY 14, 1884. CAUSE AND EFFECT.

Several of our .contemporaries have been striving; to explain the ftpparent anomaly m connection with the falling off of the Customs receipts — viz., thai the colony lias maintained its consumption of luxuries while at the tame time consuming less of the necessaries of life. The Napier Telegraph believes that a potent factor iv. that decrease has been the establishment of a line of direct steamers. Merchants formerly had to keep on their shelves large supplies because of the slowuess of the method by which those supplies could be replenished, but the direct steamers have put an end to such slowness, and now, beiug within six weeks' sail of the Home markets, many large iirms can afford to work their businesses more- economically on very much reduced stooLs. If the merchants are able to do this, to a much greater exDent is it possible m the retail trade. At the commencement of a season formerly the retailer had to purchase with no sparing han'l, he had to guage at once the likely demand there wan to bo for any particular article, because full well he knew the merchant would force all the goods on the market as early as possible, because he too knew he could not renew the novelty without running the risk of increasing his stock of unseasonable and therefore unsaleable goods. But we have altered .ill that now, thanks to t' c enterprise of the New Zealand Sbipring Company. The merchant need not import such quantities of what he may consider a taking artlole. Early m the season he can obtain a moderate supply of any aitiele, if he finds it saleable, by the aid of wire or letter he can renew the supply lon» before the. season has closed, and to a greater extent such a law holds good with the retailer, and thus we think we have clearly shown that the same amount of business can be done while working on very much reduced stocks, and which must mean a more satisfactory business to all concerned, though, for a year or two, while the business is m a sort of transition vtattj, the PustoHus must suffer. Hitherto on all hands it has been ad - mitted that New Zealaud m over-^ trading had been dealing with exces-

sive stocks, which, getting scattered into many hands as the merchants placed their goods on the. market-, benefited the Customs accordingly, while the profits of the traders were seriously diminished by the interest or money loss they suffered from the effects of their overstocking. Of course, if this view be- correct, our consumption may be quite equal to ioriuer years, while at the same time our revenue exhibits a considerable falling off. That our view is a correct one we think anyone glancing at the imports of Cliristchurch and Dunedin for the last liwo years will admit. The falling off is so serious that it can be accounted ibr on no other basis. The very serious nature of thai tailing ofi, if due to other causes, would have created a much more serious depression m those cities than they have yet experienced. A diminished trade of something approaching ou an average twenty-five percent — m some particular departments of tradeit has been nearly fifty per eent — would have meant a very serious panic indeed among 1 those immediately interested If during the next few years — and we think the period named much too long — the stocks held alike by wholesale and retail men should approximate to their normally healthy state, trade will be all the better for the present existing depression, even if the Colonial Treasurer should have Lo considerably reduce his Customs estimates. We have only to turn to neighboring colonies and study carefully their trade at the time when large direct steamers began to take thejilace of the old slow going wooden walls of our ancestors to find confirmation of our views on this point. It is not so many years ago that freights by steamers from London to Melbourne and Sydney were as high as ten to fifteen pounds per ton. Of course such a tariff was pi-ohibiiive on all except valuable novelties and articles whose bulk was not m proportion to their value. To-day all is changed, half of the trade of the ports we have named is steamer-borne, and freights have fallen to a figure little m excess of what the good old hundred da passage ships were m the habit of receiving. Wool, that could never afford to pay the rates demanded, when it was one-half higher than m value at present, is now largely shipped by steamer*'. So il is with grain, aud heavy bulk goods, such as ironmongery, can be profitably forwarded by steamer. To a certain extent such a trade has a 1 read} 7 been developed m this colony» and lhar. trade will increase month by month, and be a gain to all concerned; but m the meantime, v till things right themselves," the revenue will be the loser, aud the people the the gainers.