The Franklin Times PUBLISHED EVERY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOON. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 1932. WILL PROSPERITY RETURN?

Franklin Times, Volume XXII, Issue 90, 3 August 1932, Page 4

The Franklin Times PUBLISHED EVERY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOON.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 1932. WILL PROSPERITY RETURN?

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"We notmng extenuate nor aught.

set down in malice."

THE pronounciamientos of statesmen and world financiers in recent weeks have been for the most part so relatively hopeful that, while world conditions have not noticeably improved, there may be said to be a subtle change in the attitude of ordinary people towards the persistent and grievous depression. it represents as yet a somewhat feeble illumination, which scarcely lightens the gloom surrounding the business man and the farmer as they attempt to balance their books. Nevertheless, the agreement at Lausanne, the successful loan conversion in Great Britain, the auspicious opening of the Ottawa- Conference, and other movements of Imperial and international import are being regarded even in the most remote parts of the world with a lively interest that has not yet assumed a definite form Lhat would permit it to be labelled optimism. "Will prosperity come again?" is the question of the moment, and it elicits an entirely unofficial but none the less interesting response from Mr George Glasgow, a well-known English publicist. Mr Glasgow's engaging exercise is to show that in modern history periods of prosperity have always alternated with years of profound depression. William Pitt mourned in 1800, "There is scarcely anything around us but ruin and despair"; Disraeli, by no means an habitual Job, lamented half ;i century later lhat in industry, commerce and agriculture there was no hope; the Duke of Wellington morbidly rejoiced that he would be spared "the consummation of ruin that is gathering about us"; and in 18*8 Shaftesbury stated emphatically that the British Empire was doomed to

shipwreck. Happily these morose prognostications remain unfulfilled up to the present time. The world has suffered and survived in the past forty years or so crises of greater magnitude than those which provoked the alarmist utterances of eminent Victorians. Taking the United States as his criterion, Mr Glasgow seeks to siiow thai aonditions in the crises of 1893-97 were relatively quite as bad as anything known since 1929. Disaster crowded upon disaster, much as has occurred since 1929, and by 1897, which he takes as the analogous year

to 1933 in the present depression, the slump was causing despair. Then almost overnight it came to an end. The instrument of recovery happened to be disastrous floods and droughts

in Europe, which opened a market for bumper American crops; the result, was that America "went mad with optimism," and immediately there began a period of steady and prolonged industrial and financial prosperity throughout the world. The analogy is admittedly somewhat shaky, but it allows the conjecture that the same process may be repeated in the near future. What act of man or Nature may produce the change even Mr Glasgow will not predict, but he Jis confident that ultimately the depression will pass: "The analogy of 1897 may not be fulfilled this year or next; the particular form of its fulfilment will no doubt be different; but that in essence it will be fulfilled is certain. Just as the depth of the depression was measured in advance by the height of the precedent boom, so the height of the next boom will be measured by the depth of the present depression."