NOT SO BLACK AS PAINTED

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 101, 26 October 1925, Page 6

NOT SO BLACK AS PAINTED

Has the state of trade in Britain been painted in too low a key? There is no suggestion that the unemployment figures are exaggerated, or that firms complaining of lack of orders and short time working are unwarrantably pessimistic. But, so far as New Zealand is concerned, the coptinued high returns received from sale of meat and dairy produce could not be maintained if poverty were as general as the unemployment figures would suggest. The review of the Westminster Bank, as reported by cablegram to-day, indicates that if some industrial areas are under a cloud others are basking in the sunshine of larger profits and increased outputs. Things generally appear to the bank not so black as they have been pointed, certainly not so discouraging as Sir George Hunter, of the great English shipbuilding firm, believed when he recently wrote to Mr. Baldwin, "We appear to be on the road to ruin." For answer, reference is made" to certain industrial districts in England whose activities should modify any feel-, ings of undue pessimism. It is suggested that foreign competition could be met and countered by specialisation. That may be so | but the gratifying fact to be noted is that the state of things industrially in Great Britain is improving, and that the long-defer-red return of public confidence is returning. This is all to the good of employed aud employable; to the good of New Zealand also, so long as the British market for. its main products continues so free and so extensive*.