PROSPERITY COMING

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 October 1931, Page 8

PROSPERITY COMING

“GO AND MEET IT.” Amongst those who do not believe in sitting down with folded hands and bawuiling the present hard times is Mr E. A. Beverley, managing director of the Texas Company, Australia, who is on a visit to New Zealand. He divides business men of to-day into two classes? one of which says that thing,s couldn’t be worse, while the other says that things might be worse. “The lai ter class,” remarked Mr Beverley, “has taken its coat off, and is working three times harder than it ever did before, and it is showing J’<*sttlls. These men have faith in the immediate future. They know that prosperity is coming again. All the signs point,to the fact that it is even closer than we think. Then let us not huddle together in gloom, waiting for prosperity to come. Let us consolidate our forces and go out t 6 meet it.”

Quoting the story of a famous general. who, when it was reported to him that the enemy was attacking strongly all along the line, said: “Very i well, we will advance!” Mr Beverley went on to say:— “There is a law' of life that is also a law of business —one must go cither forward or backward, there is no standing still. Man must have work. Even if he makes wealth enough to give up that labour by which he made his wealth. Nature is inexorable. Unless that individual finds other work for his hands and his brain to do, /stagnation and decay are inevit ■' We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort, who has those virile qualities necessary to win. in the strain and strife of actual life. “The situation calls for men of vision and courage. Twelve months ago, practically all businesses were in a prosperouus state. To-day such is not the case. Yet a great many seem to forget that crises have come before in this, as in other countries, and the people have triumphed, and prosperity lias come again. All through this crisis, while a greater number of men have in the words of Shakespeare, ‘troubled deaf Heaven with their bootless cries,’ others, looking ahead and seeing thp attacks on all fronts, have

given the order to advance. They have attacked, and while they may not have made a great deal of progress, at least they have consolidated their forces, maintained their ground, and when the time is propitious will be the first to go forward to new and bigger successes.” ‘Tn times of depression, a great number of business men seem to forget that the population must be fed, that millions of families must still buy food and drink; men and women must have clothes; schoolchildren, too, must be equipped; industry must go on with its demand for materials of all kinds; coal must be dug from the earth; motor-ears and trucks in hundreds of thousands must continue to run; petrol and oil must be consumed; tyres must wear out. Amidst all the widespread upheaval, a great demand iias still to be met. The great danger is that depression can become a disease called ‘repression,’ whereby the community, badly directed, will, through fear of the future, cease to spend that normal proportion of their earnings on Lite things of life which they need, and which they are, even under present, circumstances, able to afford.”