PURSUED BY THE VALUTA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3134, 11 September 1922, Page 2

PURSUED BY THE VALUTA.

(l{\’ AH hiir Lynch.)

I am in Sweden, and I am pursued hv the Valuta, which in English means exchange. The monster lias turned against me. The Fisher has gone down —oh. that Fisher that swelled and swanke in Merlin! It has now lost its priffe of port, its sense ot powgr: it lias sunk, pin-pricked, riddled, deflated.

It makes a terrible impression on a man to see his Fisher treated -well, not exactly like dirt—but equal to only 17 Swedish kroner, and (m tho hands of a profiteering hote-Ikeeper) to 10. In previous times 18 was the low-J est figure it touched. .Moreover, in Merlin one got a ear-pet-bag lull of paper money. In Sweden 10-kroner notes are in frequent use. and so'for a Fisher one yets two or three bits of dirty yellow paper—and small in size at that. We come down from the portfolio regime to a hip-pocket purse. And the prices? They arc impish in their figures here! In Merlin I lived like a Baron on a three-shilling dmner; here in Stockholm, having incautiously asked for something not on the bill-of-fare, I was charged 4s, for a of fruit, and that while still smarting under the Valuta's mockery! Certainly when one knows tho way a little, things are not quite so bad; the standard price for a dinner without wine or coffee at a good restaurant is os 6'd. and that, compared point by point, is higher than in London. In fact, Stockholm holds the proud position at present of being the dearest capital in Europe. With it all there is stagnation in trade, unemployment on a scale only second to that of England; lock-outs, distress, relief raised to a high function of State, and pressure everywhere. All these facts hold together. One finds in the great object lessons of experience that a big Valuta is not an unmixed blessing to a country. Sweden is suffering from the same malady as England—over-production and failure of external markets. When the war ended, the "captains, of industry" here saw in the future a vast work of reconstruction of Europe, and they set their machines at work to take advantage of the commercial tide. Lor a time all went well, but instead of reconstruction in Europe wo had—politics, quarrels, agitation, conferences, and so on. and without end. Tho High Valuta stands in the way of Sweden's exports. Europe cannot afford to buy from her; on the other band, the Germans, with their cheap labor, are able to swamp Stockholm and every Swedish town with manufactured goods—textiles, for example—at less than the cost price of production in the home country. All this brings to mind how intricate is the economic problem, and how dangerous it is to try tentative methods and quack remedies. Brantiiig. the Swedish Prime .Minister, wanted to bring in an anti-dump-ing law. but he got no support. He now has a project for restoring the gold standard, and if Switzerland and Holland—both countries of high Valuta — would join in, and if finally England, would accept that view. then, he believes, a step forward to stabilisation, and to what President Harding called "normalcy," might lie gained.