CHAOS IN COMMERCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 January 1921, Page 6

CHAOS IN COMMERCE.

BRITAIN’S DIFFICULT POSITION. GLOOMY VIEW OF SYDNEY MAGNATE. As a result of his visit to England, which took him into the inner circles of finance and commerce, Sir Samuel Hordern, one of the best known commercial men in New South Wales, does not take a very optimistic view of the immediate future. This much he admitted at a welcome home dinner tendered to him by the council of the Royal Agricultural Society of which he is president.

Sir Samuel Hordern said that the primary trouble to-day appeared to be that there was too much talk and not enough work. He worked because, he was ambitious, but the only ambition of a lot of people was to take all they could get and do nothing for it. He was afraid that he could not sound a very strong note of hope, as regards the genera] outlook, as he had seen it in Engand. He could not see a very bright future for many years to come. The world was on the operating table, as' it were, but, as the doctor said, the operation might be successful but the patient might die. The whole financial situation of the world was in such a state of chaos that the leaders in commerce and banking whom he. had met in England did not know what might happen. But they hoped for the beet. They believed, and he believed, that England would come out on top, but it was going to be a difficult row to hoe.

If England lost her commercial supremacy old England would go to the wall, henep the whole commercial world' over there was looking towards the future with a certain degree of apprehension, and they only hoped that something would crop up to save the situation. It was unthinkable that the British Empire could crumple up commercially, because it was too powerful and its foundations too solidly laid and too widespread: so the hope was that something would crop up to regain the position held before the war. The war had brought about a state of affairs in two or three years that would, in the ordinary course, have been the evolution of about twenty-five years. lie did not know how long this state of affairs wan going to last, but it was rather disheartening to come back to find that everyone in commerce was being brandeg as a rogue. There should he more mutual trust and good fellowship between all classes and all parties. That alone, and getting down to solid work, would save the situation. There was too much talk of compulsion where there ought to be co-operation. Compulsion, as far as applied to industry and commerce, could •be used to the detriment of everybody. That was a danger he saw in the trend of affairs here.