THE COMMERCIAL DEPRESSION.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2696, 9 November 1881, Page 2

THE COMMERCIAL DEPRESSION.

Mr John Bathgate, in addressing a southern constituency the other day, spoke of what is known as “ the commercial depression” and its causes as follows: —

Great depression had been experienced in the Colony, whose effect were apparent in many ways —such as the scarcity of remunerative employment, the large number of small bankruptcies the fact that within nine months 300 more Europeans had left New Zealand than had come to it, and that during the lait four weeks in September there had been a falling off to the extent or £6OOO in the railway receipts as compared with the receipts for the same period of the previous year. From this it was not to be inferred that New Zealand was an unfriendly ( inhospitable country, for it was nothing of the kind. Its productiveness was something marvellous, and its mineral wealth abundant. The cause of the depression was the failure of the Glasgow Bank, and the fact that the banks here took fright, and proceeded to call in every shilling upon which they could lay their hands, and remit it Home,in order to strengthen their position in London. He found from the Gazette returns that in 18 months the banks of this Colony had extracted for that purpose the enormous sum of £3,000,000 sterling. After this he was not surprised at the depression, but was rather surprised that everyone in the Colony who had half-a-crown to spare had not been ruined. One of the causes of the depression was the abstraction of capital from the Colony. In connection with this he mentioned that he found in one of the London papers a month ago that one large squatting firm had been made a joint-stock company, and that the prospectus stated on the authority of a London accountant that that firm from the New Zealand runs had taken during the last 10 years half a million sterling. There were other two absentee runholders who must have obtained an equivalent sum; and he would not be far wrong in asserting that within 10 yeers two millions of capital had been taken from the runs in New Zealand and spent somewhere else. It might be said that these men had paid rents, but to use an undignified word, that was “ bosh.” As an instance, he mentioned that the Benmore Bun, which had been let at £SOO per year, had recently been re-let at within £lO of £3OOO per annum. His remedies for the depressed state of affairs in the Colony were that measures should be adopted to prevent absenteeism and the abstraction of our capital by shepherd kings; and for Otago the construction of the Otago Central line of railway, with its consequent devolepement of the vast resources of the interior of the Province.