GRIN AND BEAR IT

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 102, 24 January 1933, Page 8

GRIN AND BEAR IT

Recipe for Facing To-day’s

Difficulties

A CONFIDENT PROPHECY “I am not an early settler in the real sense of the word, as I have only lived 66 years in Wellington,” said Mr. Byron Brown at the Anniversary Day celebrations of the Early Settlers and Historical Association held in the Oddfellows’ Hall yesterday afternoon. “I very much doubt if we are suffering relatively to-day, despite this very serious depression, as much as the people of Wellington did between the years 1888 and 1893,” he proceeded. ‘‘Many of you will remember that time. Cast vour minds back to 1890. If you can do that you will recollect how many men had to rely on a bowl of soup in the morning and another in the afternoon for their daily sustenance; and how at that time the ships were arriving laden with emigrants from the Old Country, and the market was such that no work could be found for them. When Seddon Saved Bank. “Many of you will remember Richard John Seddon, who was then at the head of the Government. I did not always agree with Mr. Seddon politically, but he was a great Imperialist and a big man, and the culmination of that depression was when Seddon kept the House sitting right through the night, forcing a Bill through all its three readings, and seeing that the Upper House did the same, which guaranteed the Colonial Bank of New Zealand the sum of £2,000,000. “We all held its paper, and there was a rumour that the bank was going to close its doors the next day, but presumably some of the leading people interested in the bank and the colony got at Mr. Seddon, flattered him, perhaps, but at all events persuaded him to take the measure which saved the bank and thousands of its depositors from ruin.” "I am not prepared to say here that his action was a good or bad one, but this I am sure of: it terminated the depression, and perhaps started the borrowing, booming, and bursting policy which followed, and from which we are suffering at present. “Here we are in a'country that is producing more than it ever did, producing to overflowing, and possessing greater wealth than ever. All that is the matter is that many of us have not the money to purchase what is being produced. These are the labour pains in the new birth of the world, which has to adjust itself to a new set of conditions. U.S. and War Debts. “The United States at the present time admits to having 11} millions of people out of employment. They admit that—there may be many more. If we in comparison had as many we would be paying wage taxes for 150,000, whereas the number of unemployed in this country is only about half that number. The United States, which is going to suffer much more severely than it has done, will this year have to find its economic equilibrium, and it can never do that until it has wiped off the war debts. “When Roosevelt conies to the throne of power in April there will be. a movement either for a long moratorium of war debts or a wiping out, and that will be the beginning of the return to prosperity of the whole world.

“In the meantime we can only stand by and grin ami bear it. We have all been living in glass houses, and we have had to suffer for it. But a better time is coming.”