The Midas Touch.

Taihape Daily Times, 2 November 1918, Page 6

The Midas Touch.

o NORWAY IN LATTER DATS. FABULOUS WEALTH OUT OF THE WAE. «• (By Herbert Vivian in the Baily •f Express.) A Swedish statistician announces that Norway is now the most expensive country in the world, except perhaps Austria. I Fifteen crowns go to the pound, and I calculate that the purchasing power of a crown is now reduced to fourpencc You bring your sovereign and practically exchange it for four or five shillings. I was asked eleven shillings for twenty cigarettes of an unknown "brand. I pay over £2 10s a day for my modest room, and here is an odd Nearly all furs come from or through Norway, but they have to. go to England to be dressed and a fur coat costs five times more in Christiania than in London. The same applies to paper, : though Norway supplies the .pulp from I which it is made. ' Wood choppers of the interior earn &8 much as £l2 a week, A flower woman in the market made nearly £7OOO in the course of a ?nonth. Everybody is so rich that none could be found to sweep the streets last winter. this has naturally changed the Norwegian character considerably. Before "war you found kindly simplicity. Then suddenly, everybody became a shipowner. Boom succeeded boom, and

fortunes were in the grasp of the meanest. I heard of a page boy at the Grand Hotel who gathered information from the messages he carried. He started modest speculation and was soon gam--1 bling in thousands. A clerk came in the hotel to confirm a big deal by Herr Pedersen, but no such name appeared in the visitors' lists. Then the page ran up and said, "I am Pedersen." Now he owns many ships. Indeed, there has scarcely been a clerkor typist or draper's assistant who failed to become rich. The booms are now over, but there is so much money about that any one can earn it galore. • Young men display their wealth by using thousandcrown notes as ash trays and watching them burn, or as shaving papers, which they throw away. I heard of a lady who takes seven drives a day in the park and wears seven different dresses.

Spirits are forbidden here, but plenty of people nay £7 a bottle for contraband whisky. Any amount of brandy can be bought on producing a doctor's prescription. ;;nd one doctor amassed a fortune, by' soiling prescrip-, tions at 13s each., and no questions asked.

An attempt was made to impose maximum .prices, but the Food Minister confessed cynically in the Storthing that the scheme had not., succeeded, could not have succeeded and he was very glad it .did not succeed. Thus the price of eggs was fixed at 6s for twenty. You went into a shop, and were told there was no eggs. You pointed to some on .the counter and asked what they were. "Call them anything you like," was the reply, "but thci,r price is 6d each" Early in the war ail lamented the loss of their thousand torpedoed sailors and shook their fists at Germany. Now all have learned philosophy in the maelstrom of unearned increment.