DOUGLAS CREDIT PRINCIPLES

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 25 July 1935, Page 6

DOUGLAS CREDIT PRINCIPLES

WORLD TREND SURVEYED. COLONEL CLOSEY AT HAWERA. With an expansion of purchasing power as the main theme of .idle Douglas Social Credit proposals, Colonel S. J E. Closey, Dominion organi,ser, spoke last uiglit at Hawera from the angle of “World Crisis—New Zealand Drtfts.’’ He said that on any question requiring thought, New Zealand must needs set up a Royal Commission and so many had functioned in recent years that it needed a further commission to see what all the others had done towards a solution of the country’s economic problems. For five years the unemployment problem had drifted without plan or policy until to-day someone woke up to the fact that unemployment was no longer a temporary phaise ibut a permapient thing. The people were told that all was well and what was needed was more confidence. Colonel Closey, how ever, spoke of a great shrinkage in world trade since 1929 by tariffs and quotas and instanced the fact that shipping combines had instituted amovement to destroy 17 per cent, of the ships afloat and to be recompensed by a levy of 3s 6d per ton on produce. Two giant liners had been built, the Normandie and the Queen Mary, both aided by State capital, and this week it was cabled that, in order to avoid competition, consecutive voyages would be made. The world was told of a great recovery in trade, hut only in certain commodities and at what sacrifice — a rise in wool because German factories were turning out uniforms for war and a rise in steel because of armament construction. New Zealanders, the speaker said, were the world’s greatest traders per head the population, for their very existence depended upon overseas markets. The. nations of the world were planning for a deliberate expansion ot production and Russia intended to maintain pressure upon price levels. As the outcome of a, drop in wheat, Canadian farmers had been forced to change over to dairying. Argentina was expanding her beef trade and Australia was going in for more butter. Japan had increased her manufactures by half and Germany also was working along the lines of a gigantic expansion of her industries. If New Zealand die. not import she could not export, and there lay the greatest danger to her very existence, a danger that should she wander off the pastoral path to economic self-sufficiency it would spell disaster. The world trend was in her favour if sufficient purcuasiug power was available to the people to equate primary production. New Zealand »it the moment was suffering less than any other country, hut in planning for the future a new basis of money issue would he essential, to recompense producers f° r their low returns. There was a small attendance ami two questions were answered. A vote of thanks to the speaker was carried bv acclamation. Mr H. J. Finlay (Tokaora) presided. ed.