BRIGHT PROSPECTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 13, 15 July 1937, Page 11

BRIGHT PROSPECTS

THE SOFTGOODS YEAR

Reviewing the retail year ended June 30, the official organ of the New Zealand Federation of Drapers, Clothiers, and Boot Retailers remarks with satisfaction the "brisk buoyancy and expansion of business which marked a welcome return of confidence and the thawing out of many frozen assets."

Reference is made-to the wool and dairy industries in particular. "In addition to these satisfactory prices for primary products the spending power of the. wage-earners was considerably augmented by radical laws and also by higher living standards set by the Government for its employees, and enacted by the Arbitration Court for the main body of organised unionists. "Combined with all these important factors there was a substantial increase in the volume of wealth produced, both for local consumption and export, with a welcome reduction in the numbers of unemployed, although the number of workers still idle is a cause for serious concern, and a speed-ing-up of their absorption in productive and gainful employment is still a social and economic problem which has to be faced and solved." "Looking ahead the prospects for the new season we are now entering appear v v ery bright and hopeful," although there We small clouds on the distant horizon, calling for statesmanship and diplomacy in adjusting conflicting interests, and averting another largescale war.

A note of warning is uttered to the effect that "increased costs and higher taxes must cause rising prices for consumers' goods and services, and purchasing power begins to feel the pinch of the lessening value of money, to which there is always a .dangerous tendency to respond with unwarranted inflatory practices." While the outlook is distinctly cheerful and fully warrants an optimistic estimate of future prospects, the authority quoted holds that "the position is not without its dangers and the time is not for rash and experimental approaches to trade problems. Rather is the need "for those in authority to act with caution and discretion; to take a long-distance rather than a short-term view of economic conditions, so that so far as possible the recurrence of boom and slump cycles may be avoided, and that as far as practicable the heights and depths which have characterised them so disastrously in the past may Ibe escaped."