The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1872.

Evening Star, Issue 3002, 2 October 1872, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1872.

Again tho European news is favorable to New Zealand interests, so far as the prices of wool .are concerned. The fall in prices from the highest point appears to have been more than recovered, and, judging from the value of money and the reports of harvest prospects in England, although the present high prices may not be permanently maintained, there is a good prospect of paying rates for some time to come. It is, however, worth our while to consider how thia change from depression to prosperity has been brought about; for everyone in the Colony is interested in the best prices being obtained for its produce. The first element is the establishment and maintenance of peace, the nationalities of Europe have settled themselves down to something like a bearable position after having undone much of the arbitiaiy airangement effected by fraud and force in 1815. Governments, too, have had many serious lessons, and have opened their eyes to the fact that they exist at the will and for the benefit of the people. The latter are often wrong, because they have much to learn, which in times past has been studiously witheld from them ; but even by the most arbitrary Governments, their demands must be attended to or good reasons given for not acceding to them. The future will rapidly advance the industrial classes to their proper position in society. The improved condition of all classes in Europe is not, however, so much due to political causes as to what may be described as t( science applied.” Steamships and railways, because they have cheapened transit of goods, have done more to bring means of comfort within the reach of all classes of men, than all the Acts and Ordinances passed by all the legislatures that have existed since man put off the hairy coat that Darwin will have it he once grew for himself. We do not think it any exaggeration to say that millions of human beings can now afford to wear woollen goods of the very best and cheapest manufacture, who, but for the news of iron, would have been clad in rude and unsightly garments, wrought at immense expenditure of illdirected toil ; and those markets are constantly widening in proportion to human conquests over physical impediments. There can be no other limit to demand than that every human being shall be satisfied to tho fullest extent of his possible means with thepioducts of the loom. Every mile of railway pushed into districts populated, but up to this time cut off by cost of carriage from sharing in the fruits of human ingenuity, extends demand, and tends to advance and keop up tho prices of tho raw material, in order to the full development of such improved arrangements, peace is absolutely essential, iyid in proportion as it is maintained will producers and manufacfcuiers prosper. Another cause of high juices is perhaps not so generally recognised as it deserves. The large produce of the gold mines of America and Australia is beginning sensibly to affect prices in Europe. The annual import into Great Britain is valued at about £32,000,000 sterling, and there is nothing exceptional in gold, as compared with other goods, treated as an article of commerce. Gold is the basis of European currency, and if money is very plentiful, the value of goods measured by it generally increases ; if scarce, goeda become cheap. Unfortunately labor is usually favorably affected the last oi all purchasable requirements, it seldom rises in price until all commodities have accommodated themselves to altered circumstances, so that for a while those dependent upon it for subsistence, instead of deriving immediate benefit from high prices, suffer some depriva-

tions. The compensation is, that when once an advance is established, wages are the last to fall. To a great extent this fall in the value of money is one cause of the strikes for wages, and the rise in the price of meat. It is a curious problem how that anti-meat-eating movement will resolve itself, and what new industries will be developed bv it. Most probably fisheries will prosper, and not unlikely it will establish the value of our Australian preserved meats.

So far as New Zealand is concerned, one most important feature in the rise in wool is that American buyers are competing in the English market for the produce of our own pastures. That is to say, New Zealand wool has to be shipped from a New Zealand port, sent 16,000 miles, landed and warehoused in an English port, brought to the hammer by an English broker, who charges an English commission, and re-shipped for America to travel an additional 3000 miles before it can be landed in America. Men talk and theorise about circumlocution offices in Government, and grumble at the annual salary of an extra clerk, while they overlook the advantages that a certain class of politicians are striving to throw away of direct intercourse with America. They would cut off with one breath the means of livelihood of a fellow-colonist, and with the other would crush an infant enterprise that, properly worked, will add to the price of every pound of wool so much that the advance on twenty bales would pay the salary of the circumlocution officer grumbled at. Perhaps several of our readers may imagine that this is merely a squatter’s question. They are mistaken : it affects every man. It is really a legitimate question of how to add to the working capital of New Zealand. It must be plain that it wonld be the act of a fool to send goods to Auckland to land them there, sell them there, and re-ship them to Hokitika, when a direct bargain could be made with the consumers at that place. Whaf difference is there between the processes excepting in magnitude of folly? One would go a few hundred miles out of the way, the other only nearly round the world. There are half a dozen, perhaps a score, people in New Zealand who imagine themselves injured by the Californian service, and would, therefore, deprive New Zealand of its advantages, Perhaps ; their profit does turn another direction, but the true interest of the -Colony is to combine as one man to render our American service efficient. We consider we have a perfect right to gipmble when things are mismanaged, and there has hern plenty to find fault with ; but wc will pot consent to the childish action of destroying a top because we not know how to spin it. We must learn.