The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1922. PROSPECTS BRIGHTER.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 January 1922, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1922. PROSPECTS BRIGHTER.

There is every reason to believe that we have touched bottom prices for our produce, and that the improvement lately recorded in respect of all our products is but the beginning of a movement towards stable and profitable values. A year or more ago the pendulum of prices swung to an extreme point, and it recently reached the extreme in the opposite direction. Neither movement was intrinsically justified, nor of real benefit to consumer or producer. The pendulum should now slowly regain normality, when the producer will receive the real economic value of his produce, and the consumer at Home value for his money. Neither has been satisfied during the last year or two that he has been getting a “square deal,” but it is a. condition largely brought about by the suspension of or interference with the law of supply and demand, and is likely to right itself before long. The tone of the wool market is decidedly healthier, and, except for the coarser and poorer classes of wool, the demand is good and stimulating. Every penny per pound means a million sterling extra, to New Zealand; indeed, with half of the previous season’s clip in store it represents a million and a half. The Home manufacturers have been purchasing their supplies from hand to mouth, but now, with a revival of trade and the bank rate lower, they are likely to buy more freely. Continental firms are also purchasing more largely than heretofore, and it only requires the exchanges of the European countries to be improved—for it will take a long time to quite reestablish them—‘for the manufacturing countries to buy largely of wool, hides and skins. There is a real shortage of these commodities to-day in Europe,' which would readily buy all the stocks held in Australasia and elsewhere were its people in a financial position to do so. That is the difficulty to which the Genoa economic conference will address itself. The British Government fully realises that the industrial and financial recovery of England depends entirely upon England’s neighbors—friend and whilom foe alike —regaining their economic feet. Russia wants manufactured articles, etc., before it can recommence producing on the scale it did before 1914. The rest of Europe wants Russian wheat, oil, timber, minerals, etc., which it must now obtain at ruinous rates from America. Therefore credit in some form must be given Russia, devastated and almost ruined as it has been by the insane sys-

tem of government which, it appears, is at last being discarded. Germany can find a market in Russia for woollen manufactures, but she cannot get credit to enable her to purchase the raw materials, the big stocks of which are such an embarrassment to Australia and New Zealand. A way out is not easy, but that it has to be found if the people of Europe are to be given employment is recognised by Mr. Lloyd George and the other European statesmen. They have solved the naval disarmament problem, and are well on their way to solve the military problem and they may solve the economic problem if all concerned approach it in the same spirit and evince the same hearty co-opera-tion. The Continental countries are short of essential foods, such as meat, butter and cheese, and jrould buy all available stocks if

they could. There has been a glut at Home, where the spending power of the masses of the people has been so greatly restricted by the unusual amount of unemployment caused by the shortage of orders, which in ordinary times would have been forthcoming from the Continent. The mishandling of the meat supplies by the Controller of Meat was also a serious factor in the collapse of the market. Latest reports, however, show that it is now recovering, slowly, perhaps, but none the less surely. Freights, too, are being lowered, and the future for meat, which looked fairly black a few weeks ago, is now full of hope. Meat and wool affect largely the class of producer who is most deserving—the man in the baekblocks who is submitting to handicaps in various forms in order to gain a competence for himself and family. He has little to come and go upon in ordinary times, and the last year’s experience has in many instances been quite ruinous. Better times, however, would seem to be immediately ahead of him. The dairyman, the (mainstay of Taranaki, also seems to have passed the worst. Prices fell with a rapidity that appeared scarcely possible, until the week before last they stood at below 1914 levels. Butter was depressed largely as the result of the Home Government holding such huge stocks, but these have now been sold, and the market is responding from their liquidation. The increase so far does not give the producer a fair return for his labor, but it is satisfactory to know that the tide has turned. Cheap batter has already had one good effect at Home: it has materially increased the number of consumers who previously were obliged to use margarine, and, so long as prices are not too high, it is probable they will continue to use butter, for the best margarine is a poor substitute for good butter, like that supplied by New Zealand. Prospects for the new year, therefore, are much brighterall round than they were a few weeks ago, and there is every reason to believe that producers as a whole will fare a great deal better in 1922 than they anticipated. Their position, and that, of the general community, would be still further improved if the Government reduced the charges imposed by the various departments, as well as taxation, the crushing nature of whieh is felt in nearly every direction. This done, and if all sections co-operate to do their best for themselves, their employers and the country, New Zealand will emerge from her difficulties strengthened and solidified as never before.