COMMERCE IN AUSTRALIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 June 1921, Page 4

COMMERCE IN AUSTRALIA.

FEELING THE DEPRESSION. COUNTRY DISTRICTS SOUND. Commercial circles in Australia are sharing the world-wide depression at present. Unemployment is very noticeable in Sydney, and a visitor meets with a large assemblage of out-of-works in the parks. Mr. A. E. Sykes, of New Plymouth, who this week returned from a business trip to Australia, travelling extensively in Victoria and New South Wales, says there has been a general tumbling of prices, and in Melbourne the cost of clothing and boots Is down to somewhere about the pre-war level. The same tightness of money is prevalent in Australia as in New Zealand. It is the manufacturing cities where the depression is being felt most, and generally the country districts have been carrying on well. Residents from the Islands, who trade in Australia, have been hit hard by the fall in some commodities. Recently a rubber planter, who had been seven years in Samoa, arrived at the stage when his crop came to fruition, but when he put the rubber on the market the best offer he could get was Is per lb, the article having dropped from 19s to this level. As it would require a price of at least 2s fid per lb to pay for capital invested the planter was facing a fairly big loss. Traders in copra have met with similar depressed markets. In the journey through the western districts Mr. Sykes noticed a stack of several thousand sacks of potatoes which had been lying idle for months, as there was no market for them. Onion crops likewise did not meet with a sale, and the result in both instances means heavy losses to the farmers; The dairying districts in Australia are the best off to-day, Mr. Sykes stated.