AN AMERICAN VIEW.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 27 May 1915, Page 2

AN AMERICAN VIEW.

« ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR". In giving their opinion of the effects of the war, the members of a American firm says: "it has caused five hundred millions of people to begin to 6ave even their potato peelings. It has caused two hundred million people in Russia to be soberi all at one time, athing that never happened in this world before. •> It has caused you and your neighbor in this country to reduce household expenses and to stop spending money on unnecessary things. It has suddely checked the waste of capital by individuals, by corporations, and by the Government, for even the Government is seized with a, spirit of econonry. Of course, there is much unemployment in consequence, and some of the readjustments are painful, but the economic effect will be wonderfully beneficial, and the ratio of productive to unproductive labor., in the economic sense, will be higher afterwards. Under all its disabilities we dare say the world to-day is saving capital faster than before the war started. It was saving very little hef^re. The trouble economically was that the world's expenditure had overrun its ability to save,, hence the rise in the price of capital everywhere in the last few years. Nobody can predict with certainty what the economic effects of the war will be, but here are things to think about."