WORLD CONDITIONS

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 187, 7 May 1934, Page 3

WORLD CONDITIONS

Interdependence of Nations VISITORS’ IMPRESSIONS A visitor to Wellington at present is Mr. Walter Hackett, managing director of the English firm of Tubes Investments, Ltd. Mr. Hackett, who is accompanied by his wife, is en a world business tour. His company, which invented steel-shafted clubs, , manufactures all classes of steel tubing. In an interview he said that the cycle trade in Australia was definitely improving. World trade was so much better that customers were actually experiencing difficulty in having their deliveries completed. Concerning the exchange rate, Mr. Hackett stressed the necessity of assisting farmers. Expensive exchange was cruel in certain individual cases, he said. New Zealand’s action in raising the rate was not a contravention of the Ottawa Agreement to the extent that an equal handicap was imposed on all countries from which New Zealand imported. It was an action taken to assist the primary producers, to whom assistance must be given, so that they could afford manufactured articles. 'AU the world’s troubles were, international, and no nation could rise in- ' dividualiy, Mr. Hackett' said. He spoke of the interdependence of nations in trade and traced, the life history of an article finished in America to indicate that probably the United States estimate of its foreign trade as only 7 per cent, of the whole was probably very much too small. “It will be necessary for an increasing standard of living to be arranged for the primary producer," Mr. Hackett said. “This, in my opinion, can .be arranged only by international fixing of minimum prices and quotas. I claim that every time the primary producers, who are by far the greater portion of the world’s population, get a better return for their labour, the prosperity the.v enjoy will work back to the townspeople, because they will be larger purchasers of the manufactured articles which at present they cannot afford to buy.” Russia was returning to capitalism, said Mr. Hackett, who spent some time there last year. The trend was gradual, but the Government itself was offering Interest on an Internal loan, Russia had machinery that was too good for her; there were no men skilled enough to run it .The Soviet, however, was paying its way with the product of the soil. “Whatever the trend of things in Russia, whether to capitalism or not.” Mr. Hackett said, "I can only hope the.v will win through Io soiuething much better than they have had In the past, because an improved standard of living in such a largo body of people cannot but. be beiioflclnl Io the rest of the world.”