TRADE CONDITIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 23349, 19 August 1939, Page 20

TRADE CONDITIONS.

TO THE BDITOK. Sir, —In a recent issue you commented on trade recession in the city, it is a matter of public interest to focus attention upon some other manifestations of a like kind. Building and allied trades show marked evidence of recession. Plumbers, drainers, electricians, fibrous plasterers, and painters, etc., who until recently were working to capacity are now eagerly seeking contracts. A builder with whom the writer is in contact stated that he was besieged during last week-end by carpenters ;tnd labourers anxious for work. These are clear indications of increasing trade stagnation. A general tightening in the financing market conditions this backward movement. The stream of loan moneys on which all enterprise depends is shrinking, and it is pertinent to inquire the reason for this shrinkage. In postulating that the Government’s greed and need for money initiates this trade decline one may justifiably indicate that the rapid absorption by a currency-grabbing regime of as much internal credit as it can lay its hands on inflicts on commerce wounds which drain away its vei'y life blood. The Government recently borrowed £4,500.000 from internal sources, and we understand that it is coming on the market again. Those who need money must therefore stand aside until a rapacious borrower is satisfied. The flow of money in commercial circles is accordingly already retarded, which means that new projects must be abandoned on account of lack of finance. The will to work, the brains to conceive, and the courage to act are thus immediately negated by. tie government’s

grabbing at the means of commerce. It follows that good and zealous workers will find themselves out of work, and the circulation of money will slow down, to everyone’s loss and embarrassment. We have heard glib remarks from Labour’s rostrum that the people’s credit shall be used by ahd for tho people. It is vitally necessary to warn the people that these would-be guardians and custodians of public credit may only be competent to deplete the treasury they claim to conserve. Has it ever been recorded that the Government is more efficient and expeditious in these fields which are the rightful province of industrial and individual activity? The answer to this Question satisfies the inquiry whether the Government can circulate internal credit more quickly and continuously than our competent industrialists, be they builders, engineers, farmers, middlemen, or workers. In the |ast year or two we have passed many signs marked “ danger.” If the Government does not cease its hogging of the internal finance market we shall rapidly come to the last sign of all labelled “ collapse.” Under that sign it shall little comfort a workless people to hold as evidence of thrift the Government’s JOU, its promise to pay, the bond which Mr Lee, of “ paper chains,” already regards as irksome. —I am, etc., Advance. August 18.