PAINTED TOO BLACK

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 26 October 1925, Page 5

PAINTED TOO BLACK

BRITISH TRADE PICTURE.

BRIGHTER ASPECT INDICATED,

INDUSTRIAL SPECIALISATION,

BY CABLE—PEESS ASSOCIATION —COPYRIGHT. (Received Oct. 26, 10.35 a.m.) LONDON Oct. 25. Sir George Hunter’s pessimistic remarks about the country’s trade, made last month, are dealt with in the Westminster Bank Review, which says: “The picture as a whole is painted much too blackly. If Sir George Hunter had been equally familiar with conditions in districts like Coventry as he is with North-East England, his outlook would certainly have been modified.”

The Review points out that the latest annual analysis; of nearly 1500 British limited companies shows on the average that profits had increased during the last year, and recent calculations place the volume of British production during 1924 as 85 per cent of that of 1925, as compared with 80 per cent of 1921 and 95 per cent of 1923. Tho Review proceeds to make a suggestion that Britain may have to attack the problem of foreign competition in trade by making a fresh advance in the direction of industrial specialisation. That is. we may have to devote our energies less to cruder industries which foreign countries can carry on successfully locally with their own resources. and devote more attention to finished processes, in which our position is unchallenged. The writer adds: “The process of transition may he painful in some respects, hut we shall he advancing a stage further along the path to economic evolution.”—A. and N.Z. Assn.

Sir .George Hunter, head of Swan, Hunter and Wigham, the shinbuilding firm, wrote at the beginning of September to the Prime Minister (Mr Stanley Baldwin), suggesting that an inquiry into coalmining is not enough; the present situation demands an immediate and comprehensive inquiry into the economic position of the whole country’s industries. The future of the British Empire is at stake. Shipping is becoming more and more depressed, and ships are increasingly lying up. The iron and steel, trade is largely idle and the shipbuilding yards are closed or closing. He concludes: “We are not on the road to improvement. We appear to he on the road to ruin.”