THE INEVITABILITY OF GOLD.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20729, 14 December 1932, Page 17

THE INEVITABILITY OF GOLD.

TO .-'HE EDITOR OF TBI! PEESS Sir, —The reading of so many letters in your wrrcspondeiico columns on swell, kindred ' topic as go}d, currency, inflation, deflation, exchange, and, of course, Douglas Credit, yro-vokes this from oue who very rarely takes a. part in Press controversy. 1 would state at the- •utset that I am not one of that monstrous regiment of new economists who have fallen on us like a plague of locusts—God forbid!—hut my views will perhaps receive all the more consideration on that account. I have never heard nor seen so much nonsense spoken and written as

is now let loose over tins economic depression. The other day, tor example, a correspondent in your columns calmly declared that it would not matter if all the gold in the world were dumped in the Pacific. It is certain that the man. advocating such a course has no gold of his own, and so he is ready !to sacrifice quite cheerfully the gold ; belonging to the other fellow. It we [ are going to throw over gold now, I when we have lost it or have not got Ji l and search for some substitute, it to me to be something like "welshing.'' Wo wero quite content so long as the same was "going in our |'favour. Now it is going" against us we cry it is no game at all. A little thought and reflection might save even those strange new economists from, some of their most ridiculous illusions. Gold, they might remember, from almost prehistoric times has been highly valued by mankind., and has for. long centuries been adopted as the med7n"i, of exchange. And it has served the purpose well —otherwiso would it have been tolerated for so long? 'We do not want at all to jettison goki, because wo luuo lost it, and adopt any of the new fantastic schemes. What we do want is to clevis.©, means to compel tho gold to flow freely again, and learning from tho present experience to take care that it will never again be hoarded up and rendered useless while the peoples ot the earth suffer from its immobility. And that will be a thousand times easier to do than to throw gold as the medium of exchange into the discard and gamble on another untried system that might succeed —or might fail—and make tho collapso of civilisation complete. But these young men in a hurry with their chatter of new economics will have nothing to do with an oldestablished system. They must have something new. Past history and past experience mean nothing to them. The birth of financial genius synchronises with their own birthdays. They speak of barter. If I am going to Eurooe. am I going to ship along with me half the goods in my shop to pay tho cost* There are other fantastic schemes of credit it gives mo. a headache to read about, as. they would probably give bankruptcy to any nation to try them out. Tho world that has used gold for currency for probably 4000 or 5000 years is not likely to. displace it for another 5001) years, and in a gold-producing country like New Zealand where there are large territories unexplored and uuprospected—as in the .south-west hinterland of this Island—the wise course would be to send our vigorous vonng unemployed men to search for the gold which still awaits finding. That is being done in a half-hearted fashion, but it should he more and more encouraged and exploited, tor one great gold-bearing area would in a twinkling raise us from our present difficulties and end the troubles we are fighting so desperately at present, with so little apparent success.-Yours etc.. Decemb-r i:Uh. U»L'.