THROUGH SLUMP TO TRADE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 597, 7 January 1921, Page 2

THROUGH SLUMP TO TRADE.

I Sir Leo Chiozza Money, in the “ Observer/’) says;— 44 In Recent Srcct the other clay I encountered a big' crowd before a shop window which told the • attractive tale that a West Lnd tailor was prepared to make one suit 0)' overcoat for the easy sum of five guineas paid in advance. An enormous business was apparently being clone. .1 know nothing of the cloth used or the methods employed, save that the firm in question has on occasion served me very well, but 1 am quite sure that the eager throng of buyers, whatever happened to them, was represcnatlve of the trade that ought to be, and might be, as distinguished from the trade that is. The market has been done to death by high prices. It there is short time in Lancashire and Yorkshire, it is not because the needs of the people have fallen. Potential demand is always with us, but demand for cotton shirts at 20/, and for worsted suits at SIC, is necessarily small. There is really every reason to rejoice that the turn of the tide has come, and that prices are falling here as in America. We shall never win to a larger production until production itself is liberated by a fall in values. Producers of the commodities already mainly affected arc taking action to stay the downward course of prices. The British and Dutch rubber producers, who control nearly all the world’s rubber, have unanimously resolved, in council a The Hague, to cut down output to make the law of supply and demand amenable to discipline. The Indian and Ceylon Tea Associations pave clone the same. In certain manufactures, short time is being worked to the same end. Most extraordinary of all, in America the cotton-plant-ers are organising night-riders who serve upon the ginnery notices that arson will be the reward of those who produce 100 much, It is not u little remarkable that all these things should be concurrent with the cry that we must produce more, H |is pleasant to turn from stories of hold-up to the records, also available,!

Ul pnce ruuuctiun tu iiuuvu demand active. Surely nothing- is more certain than that in Hie longrun. the wpr!(,l of work will not tolerate the existence of. national and international combination!! Ip withhold essential materials from use. What the world needs is plenty, for