TRADE RECOVERING.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 October 1921, Page 4

TRADE RECOVERING.

BETTER TONE IN TARANAKI. OPTIMISM FOR THE FUTURE. BUSINESS MEN’S VIEWS. That commercial business ia slowly but surely tegaining a state of solidity is the opinion expressed by New Plymouth business men who discussed the outlook with a Daily News reporter yesterday. “It must not be supposed, however, that the public are reverting to spending money on luxuries, a phase of business peculiar to the period of high profits during and immediately following the war,” said one business man. “The .tendency is rather to confine expenditure to useful or necessary lines, and this fact is giving business a saner and more healthy tone.” “Trade can scarcely be said to be buoyant,” said a hardware man, “but we have certainly nothing to complain about in our returns. There is still some difficulty in securing stocks, a feature which is largely influenced by the impending revision of tariffs.” A prominent retailer said: “Trade is yet a long way from its pre-war levels, and it is well that it is so, especially for the empoyees, while rates and taxes remain so high. If trading • conditions were back to normal wages would have to be reduced, and while facing such a high dost of living employee® can stand little reduction in wages.”

There is much less pessimism in trade circles to-day than was the case a few months ago, and this, no doubt, is largely influenced by an exceptionally promising opening to the producing season. From all over the Dominion come reports of increased yields, especially in the dairying industry, while sheep fanners report high percentages of lambs, with excellent prospects of fattening owing to the abundance of fodder. The wool-growing industry is taking consolation from the fact that the bottom has been reached and growers are heartened with a slight but decided upward tendency and believe that prices cannot now look back. There is a growing tendency noticeable of late among business and producing men to view the future with greater confidence, and it is significant thatwhile during the late downward plungtf in the prices of some primary products wholesale bankruptcies were prophesied, comparatively few failures have occurred, and with the corner now apparently turned there is reason to believe that the spectre of disaster is receding. The Taranaki province, where conditions have continued better than in other parts, is regaining its wonted prosperity, and the surdSt gauge of this is found in its trading centres, where the merchants report a slowly but steadily increasing volume of business in solid' lines that meke for reproduction and consequent prosperity.