The Daily News. SATURDAY, JULY 23. MR. BEAUCHAMP AND CAPITAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 89, 23 July 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, JULY 23. MR. BEAUCHAMP AND CAPITAL.

An impression seems* to be abroad that Mr. Harold Beauchamp, chairman of the Bank of iNew Zealand, is a banker, and that his extraordinary remarks about the state of trade of the country he was born in are the opinions of the head of the greatest of all banks doing business in the Dominion. Mr. Harold Beauchamp is not a banker, but a merchant, and does not in any way administer the actual diurnal operations of the institution. The ordinary banker—in the real sense of the term—would under no circumstance have dared to generally advertise his private or political opinions, and no board of directors of any financial institution would permit any memTaer or servant to indulge in damaging remarks which read like the conclusions of a disappointed politician. The ordinary citizen is entitled to infer that Mr. Beauchamp, assuming the role of a banker, is piqued at the position disclosed by the fact that the banks are holding large deposits and advancing very little money—the latter being, of course, the most payable proposition, and of more consequence to directors and shareholders. It is unnecessary to go fully into the reply of the AttorneyGeneral to Mr. Beauchamp, in which the Minister showed point by point the irrelevancy of the chairman's conclusions, Ms ignorance of real facts, and his misunderstanding of actualities. To attribute the lack of confidence in business enterprises throughout the Dominion to the Death and Succession Duties Act of last session is as convincing as would be a statement that the price of flooringboards was ruining the pig industry. No studious banker could have made the error of mentioning that under any taxation act a sum of forty thousand pounds paid twenty per cent, when in reality it only paid eight per cent., nor would the banker deduce from this premise the conclusion that the country was going to the dogs (and the country stacking money in the banks' strongrooms) because of this nefarious Act. It is impossible, with the closest study of the merchant's remarks, to understand his attitude in regard to the withdrawal of capital from New Zealand. The expert chairman shows, for instance, that the coffers of the Bank of New Zealand and the other banks are choking. How comes it that this condition obtains if "capital is leaving the country"? The chairman of the Bank of New Zealand is a roan who has been much in print. It is the habit of oity papers to fly to him on "dog-days" when the newsmarket is at low ebb, and as he is fluent and accomplished he is remarkably easy "copy." But the deed of a reporter's hour may be the undoing of a whole country. The people of Australia and England, South 'Africa and the Argentine, who read the remarks of Mr. Beauchamp will conclude that he is "au fait" with banking matters and the affairs of all businesses and capitalist o i" t l-; s country. That he is not acquainted with the Act that is driving cap'til out of the country (but which is piling \m the deposits and shortening the advances) has been proved conclusively. It will be found later that the reasons for the misconceptions that have been loosed on the public of the Dominion (and of the publics of other countries) have a deeper meaning than has been disclosed. It is conceivable that before Mr. Beauchamp is re-elected chairman of the Bank of New Zealand at the next annual meeting he will have carefully perused any Acts that are the means of driving capital out of the country, in mere justice to the people who have to live in it and who earn such bis profits for the concern of which he is the head.