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Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 43, 26 June 1913, Page 4

only amounted to £81,294. Considered from any aspect the Bank's business for the past year seems to have been' eminently sound and satisfactory, while expansion on right lines is manifest. In his very valuable general remarks Mr Beauchamp covers wide ground, and deals with matters difficult for any hut the trained man of finance to fully understand. That stringent monetary conditions have: pervailed, and still continue, settlers; and business men are fully aware, and to-day Mr Beauchamp sets out some of the causes responsible for a stringency which we may hardly dare hope to find relaxed in the near future. At least that is Mr Beauchamp's view of it, and he has before this proved himself an accurate reader of the financial barometer. War and the great wasteful expense on armaments ; the steadily improving social conditions; the increased activity of industry, have become together '.'a combination of adverse influences," and have constituted a stupendous drain upon the, financial resources of the world. Hence the stringency, the marvel of which, Mr Beauchamp says, is not that it exists, but that it is not more pronounced. There is much more of very general interest in the matter dealt with in the Chairman's able address published fully elsewhere. Mr Beauchamp is by no means pessimistic: lie is convince" that the prospects before Xew Zealand are bright and promising, and we are with him in that view if only some of the clouds which now are shadowing the relations between capital and labour may be dispelled.