FAR FROM ROSY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 194, 18 August 1930, Page 4

FAR FROM ROSY.

CONDITIONS IN U.S.A. MANY MILLIONS IDLE.. According to the New York•■ correspondent of the "London Economist," heavy liquidation of. American stocks was a feature of. the -week ending June 21. The -writer stated that a wave of selling had set in, the chief cause of which appeared to he the growing public realisation that the depression in industry had deeper roots than the authorities had hitherto been prepared to admit. Describing. the efforts of officialdom, from President Hoover downwards, to allay, public anxiety, the correspondent says: — "Throughout the first quarter of 1930 one side of Times Square, in New York City, carried an immense hoarding which bore the legend, amusingly ingenuous to .the eyes' of the stranger unversed _in American methods, 'Forward America! They can't beat US! Business is Good. Keep it Good!' Smaller copies of this poster were to be found on other hoardings and . occupying spaces in the daily Press. Its anxious reiteration was typicalof the methods in \ise for exorcising the ; evil spirits loosed by the Stock Market, crash. The herd rushed towards the cliff, and Mr. Hoover and his associates stood: across their path, a thin but determined White House line. In the circumstances,, they were not too careful in their choice of methods, and their speeches were often misleading." ' , ■ ' These cheer-giving statements benefited 1 the Stock Exchange, but only temporarily. Of the unemployment situation, the correspondent says:— '"Undoubtedly unemployment, at any rate during the first quarter of 1930, was very severe, and may easily have exceeded 4,500,000. The much advertised and brutally dispersed Communist meetings in; New York were really gatherings of the unemployed, leavened by a few Communist speakers and agitators. Destitution was great and begging general."