THE WAIMATE ADVERTISER. THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 1902. OUR EXPORTS.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 177, 13 March 1902, Page 2

THE WAIMATE ADVERTISER. THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 1902. OUR EXPORTS.

It is not very pleasant to think that while we have exported over forty million pounds more wool than we did in 1891, yet the total value of the wool we Bent away last year was £480,583 less thao the value of tho very mnch smaller amount exported ten years ago. Tho actual figures are: 18H 1 .£4,120,686: valm-d at-£3.6099,108. These are i ib« fivjurrs "fviMi -n .i return just by the Bngtetrar*Geneni]. j If tho value-* of 1891 had kept up wo should have got for our wool oxjfortpd wellou to •ftS.OOJ/ftOlipi I

thirds of that amount. I 1! 1 i?•> is not very agreeal ie new?, and from the prices that have been going lately we should not be snrprised to find the story fur the year l';io2 as unpleasing. On the other hand, frozen meat seems i<> be keeping up well. The figures for this product are :—lßl)l—Quantity exported — 1,000,307 cwt at a value of £1,194,724-, 11)01 1,894,71-kwt valued at £2,258,245. There is thus an increase in ten years of 894,407 cwt in quantity and of £1,048,521 in value. The price of the frozen mutton per cwt. seems if anything to have increased, which is refreshing to reflect on, It .is, however, a very grave injury that the British Government has done these colonies —in spite of our liainbuoyant patriotism—by giving a contract to supply the army meat from the Argentine. Not only will it mean the loss of a very large piece of business to us, but it will be the means of establishing a line of steamers from the Argentine .to the Cape, and a regular trade between the two places, a thing that we in New Zealand are just goiug to expend a considerable sum of money trying to do, for we are offering a large subsidy to a shipping company to send steamers regularly from here to South Africa. The Argentine people will get all that done for them for nothing, and in addition make a lot of money from cash sales to Mr Bergl and his company. Truly patriotism seems to vanish from the view of the British Government when it comes to a question of £. s. d.,and because big money men in England and South Africa have ' interests' in the Argentine, and wish to get the frozen mutton from there, ;New Zealand ami Australia, after all their patriotic sacrifices are ignored in favour of the foreign Argentine. Can this be the Government that talks Imperialism in such loud tones, and clamours for ' closer trade relationship ' between the colonies and the Mother Country ? Certainly it seems a new way of drawing closer those silken bonds as far as Australia and New Zealand are concerned, to give preference in a peculiarly Imperial piece of business to the foreign country that of all others we most fear and dread as a trade rival. Butter and choese show up wonderfully well in the "returns,

Here are the comparative figures : cwt., value £150,258; cheese, 39,770 cwt., value £BG,G7S. 1901 : butter, 201,424 cwt., value £881,775 ; cheese, 104,216 cwt., value. £238,685. According to these returns, the prices of butter and cheese have been increasing somewhat during the last ten years, and the trade, of course, has increased enormously.. It seems hard that nowadays we should have to sell our wool for not much more than half of what we used to get for it ten years ago. The fall in price is, no doubt, owing to a variety of causes. There is keener com-

petition owing to increased production in this and other countries. It is said that in large quantities of cloth of various kinds wool is not nearly so much used as it used to be—merino wool at all events. It is, of course, argued by the School of Economists called the Bimetallists that one of the main reasons why wool has gone down so much in price is that the value of the sovereign, of gold generally, has what they call 'appreciated.' Shortly put, they argue this way : All business ,in most countries is conducted on a gold basis, that is to say, all debts rre settled by payment in gold, or at all events payment in gold may be demanded, that being the only mode of payment the law considers a legal settlement. Now, the volume of business is increasing ©very year by leaps and bounds, and the amount of gold available for carrying on that business does not increase in anything like the same proportion. There being only a limited number of sovereigns then, and the demand for them, for business purposes, the volume of trade increasing largely every year, having also largely increased their value, has increased or appreciated very considerably, and to get a sovereign you have to give- mora in return for it than you used to have some ten or twenty years ago. So that Bimetallists would make silver legal tender for payment of debts as well as gold, and thus greatly reduce the power fxercised by the -hoidori} ot gold: <JUsfrov,- af - it we're,',/jbe , monopoly, u now 1 "> fii^iAvkA^h^^^M^iithi^aßk'^hhi

control that commodity. Of eom-.se, on the other side it is

<argued that as a matter of fact j, go id itself- (sovereigns) U really aft or all but Ilttlu for payment of debts of any size, that being usually done by cheque or draft, which is paid into the bank and entered to the customer's credit, no gold passiug- at all, except perhaps between banks occasionally when settling balances. However, this is too large a question to go into here at present. We may, however, add that many very able men say there is some force in the Bimetallist's arguments, Mr Arthur Balfour and Mr Goschen amongst them.