THE TRADE DEPRESSION.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 January 1922, Page 8

THE TRADE DEPRESSION.

DISSIPATING THE CLOUDS. GREAT BRITAIN’S POSITION, LABOR COMING TO REASON. According to Mr. C. P. Skerret, K.C., who returneu to Wellington on Saturday from his trip abroad, Great Britain will be the first country to emerge from the trade depression. “Substantial progress,” he says x “has already been made. The prices of raw materials are being stabilised, and the confusion necessarily entailed by the constantly falling of prices of articles essential for manufacture is being eliminated. The rate of interest paid on capital for employment in reconstruction has greatly exceeded the prewar rate, and the dangers of attracting for investment in Government'loans capital needed for trade developments have been fairly exemplified. Nevertheless determined and well-directed efforts are being made toward reconstruction and the feeling is gaining ground evej/ ih Labor circles that the welfare of all classes of the community can be served only by the more efficient co-operation between employer and worker.

“As to revolutionary propaganda,” continued Mr. Skerret, “there can be no doubt that, despite /he great efforts of the revolutionary protagonists, the doctrine that the millennium will be created, ipso facto,’ by the destruction of the existing economic system, has lost its savour. There is a growing disposition on the part of the worker to appreciate in his own interests the necessity for efficient production and the elimination of strikes, the ‘go-slow’ system, and the constant ‘pin-pricking’ of capital. “The conditions in Northern and Middle Europe, especially their inflated paper currency are at present an obstacle in the way of trade recovery so far as Great Britain is concerned. Until the foreign nations grapple with the problem their market must be largely closed to British manufactures and products. There is a disposition in England to assist in this, even financially, but the Uhited States apparently does not wish to take any part in such a plan, though that counry also is vitally concerned.”