BRAZIL’S PROSPERITY

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 December 1934, Page 3

BRAZIL’S PROSPERITY

TAXES UNPOPULAR. Brazil is a haven these days, because Brazil, speaking in general terms, dbes not know there is a depression. Of course the man who must buy exchange to import goods, or the man who was speculating on the stock exchanges of other countries, or the man who. is engaged in the coffee business has his problems. But the man on the street, the clerk in the office, the rent payer, Mr and Mrs Average Citizen, are going along with as little trouble as they had in 1929, writes Marjorie Shuler in the “Christian Science Monitor.” Investments in Brazil are largely in land and land has not lost its value, nor have rents declined or advanced. There has been only one bank failure. Banks and stocks still pay dividends. The condition of the money markets abroad actually means that more money stays in Brazil for development at home, which means that there- are more new buildings, more new national industries, more manufacturing of things formerly imported. Self-contained, with untapped sources of natural wealth in the interior, and an unambitious "pattern of living” the Brazilian is as happy as ever. Simpler standards, fewer luxuries, not so many expensive tastes all contribute to the comfort of the Brazilian in the year 1934.

What all the development of home industries will do to the outside world is another question. Brazil used to ship cocoa and buy back cocoa butter, send her diamonds to Amsterdam to be cut, and import clothing and perfume from Paris. Now it is engaging in all this manufacture at home. All of which is very much to the good for Brazil in numberless ways, for the taxes which other countries are linding it necessary to impose would not be accepted too politely in Brazil. To put it frankly the Brazilian does not take kindly to dictation. Get off the main-travelled roads and a driver may turn left as often right. Let a notice be posted on the beaches to say that men must wear coats out of the water and keep on the tops as well as the trousers of their bathing suits in the water, and the order is disregarded with a casual nonchalance

On one of the beaches there was an attempt to charge a fee. One of the ■first customers was a member of Parliament. The next day. he rose in the National Assembly and demanded to know who owned the sand if not Brazil and what was the country coming to if citizens were to be compelled to pay to use their own waterfront. The fee was promptly abolished. “We don’t like to be regimented," says a public official. “Everybody wants to be different. Nobody wants to be standardised.”

HILARIOUS GOOD TIMES. Work' is plentiful, wages are. not high, but living is easy and thii Average common man only wants carnival once a year, food, shelter, and clothing. The carnival is very important. For months the Brazilians engage in processions, in dancing, in strange costumes, in hilarious good times. Bad carnival weather might easily bring about a revolution, says the business man, wfio sees in carnival a certain letting-off of energy. Certainly the people work hard at their good times. The square in the city are a succession of small carnivals from the first of January to March, and during the last

few days of the season confetti and paper ribbon heaped up on the sidewalks serve for beds for hundreds of people in from the country. The labour laws look upon work in banks as being very arduous, so that employees are only permitted six hours of work a day. A new law is being discussed which would require the payment of one month’s salary fdf every year of work in the event of dismissal of an employee. Every worker gets 15 days’ vacation a year, exclusive of Sundays, so that a clever person taking advantage of holidays can spin his allotment out to nearly three weeks. Every user of light, gas, telephone, or telegraph finds on his bill a 2 per cent, tax which goes into a pension fund for employees, in public utilities. Pension plans are pending in other' industries. Brazil welcomes immigration, and

among her newest citizens are Japanese, the colony near Sao Paulo now numbering nearly 60,000, with about 25,000 in the north near Para. Those around Sao Paulo are engaged in agriculture, but some people look to the Para colony to engage in silk manu facture in competition with the French.