"CLUMSY BARTER."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 18, 23 January 1933, Page 8

"CLUMSY BARTER."

HINDRANCE TO TRADE. GOVERNOR-GENERAL'S VIEW. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) NAPIER, Sunday. Speaking at the Napier Chamber of Commerce jubilee dinner, which was held in conjunction with the "New Napier" carnival last evening, the GovernorGeneral, Lord Bledisloe, touched on the subject of the gold standard and overproduction. / "If there were a plentiful supply of gold (or whatever might be the token or medium of world commodity exchange), and if in the absence of national tariffs, bounties and cartels, cheapness were allowed free play, local surpluses would flow naturally to where there is a scarcity and would be bought freely with a plentiful currency," said his Excellency. "The extraordinary factor —particularly marked on the Continent of Europe —is that with the fall in the open world market prices, the demand has not increased, as it inevitably would have done under normal conditions and universal freedom of trade. But for man-made impediments imposed in supposed national interests, the cheapness of food would have increased its consumption and facilitated the absorption of the world's output. Similarly, there is said to be no actual deficiency of gold, but the aggregation of over 00 per cent of the normal requirements in the coffers of two nations not only reduces commodity values in terms of gold, but also clogs the wheels of international exchange arid, incidentally, the equitable settlement of old-standing international obligations. In the meantime the old-fashioned, clumsy system of barter of one commodity for another is being attempted in several countries, and bimetallism is being advocated in many quarters." Continuing, his Excellency eh id that international readjustment was pressing and i inevitable unless economic adversity and serious lowering of the general scale of living were to become the normal instead of temporary world factors, and that needed to be recognised and acted upon at the forthcoming World Economic Conference. Such readjustment would dispel from the minds of efficient and alert primary producers the bogy of over-production and the fear of their occupation becoming permanently unprofitable.