SAVED BY WHEAT.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 May 1921, Page 5

SAVED BY WHEAT.

AUSTRALIA’S FINANCES.

“NEAREST THING" IN HISTORY.

Sydney, April 19. This is a lucky country—how lucky, the people are only just beginning to realise. It can be seen clearly enough now, when the danger is practically past, that had it not been for that bounteous wheat harvest of the past season, and the demand from abroad for wheat, Australia would have had a financial crisis of the first magnitude. The foundation of the threatened trouble lay in the economic confusion of the post-war years. Then in 1919 and 1920, there came r. severe drought. Production generally received a tremendous set-back, and stockowners had to bear heavy losses. Meanwhile, with the war over and a general desire to build up depleted stocks, the whole continent suffered from the importing crane. The export of produce accumulated during the war years was heavy, but importation was heavier—and in the latter half of 1920 the whole country was suddenly

“up against it.” Everything seemed to go wrong. The bottom fell out of the metals markets with a crash, and the tremendous

w’ealth-earning agencies represented in the Australian mining towns were suddenly useless. Broken Hill is “dead;” what, a year or two ago was the prosperous copper mining town of Cobar is now a gaunt collection of uninhabitated houses. Similarly wool crashed. As New Zealand knows only too well, wool is for the moment almost worthlessAustralia has a colossal collootion of 3,000,000 bales which she is holding *n the hope of better weather. Hides have slumped and slumped, and the leather and allied industries are suffering severe depression. Every Australian financial institution was carrying the primary producers over the bad years *>f 1919 and 1920; and when things went from bad Lo worse a crisis seemed inevitable. But the drought broke and the Government took a gamblers chance. “Plant wheat,” they cried, and guaranteed a high price. The response was nation wide and splendid. The harvest was a magnificent one, the market, most luckily, was there. To-day. million* arc flowing into Australia in payment fot that wheat. The farmer is getting it; he is paying the long-auffering storekeeper; the latter is paying the warehouses, and they are paying tbeii anxious creditors. The slump in othei industries has been adequately offset and the corner appears definitely to b< turned. But the State Treasurer® and th< financial institutions now tell us thai it wa® “the nearest thing” in our fin ancial history.