The Marlborough Express. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. MONDAY, JULY 29, 1907. TRADE WITH SOUTH AFRICA.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 177, 29 July 1907, Page 4

The Marlborough Express. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. MONDAY, JULY 29, 1907. TRADE WITH SOUTH AFRICA.

A cable message from Sydney in Saturday's Express announced the return to that,city of the gentleman who has been for some, years acting as the Commercial Agent for New', South Wales in Capetown, The wording of the message seems to intimate that the agency has been abandoned, or at least that it is not to be maintained on its old footing. Mr Valder, though appointed and paid by the State of New South Wales, has in practice been acting for the whole of the Commonwealth, and his withdrawal, if withdrawal it is, is, significant and suggestive of a waning commerce. And if Australia finds it unprofitable to push the trade in Africa there is not much room to hope that New Zealand will be able to reap any advantage from the reciprocal tariff recently confirmed. The Commonwealth is able to avail itself of two or three ready-provided steam services, and can easily beat us in the matter of freights to Durban and the Cape, while her products are in many respects better adapted to the demands of the South African markets. In such articles of export as timßer and leather, and (save in drought seasons) fodder, the Australians enjoy an immense; superiority, not only in point of freights and frequent shipment, but because of t^fre elaborate system of agencies they have established or promoted. It is hardly likely that another man could be found to possess so many of the special qualifications needed to push trade in what may be called a foreign country as are combined in Mr Valder. A native of NewSouth Wales, he received a special training in scientific agriculture, has been director of the Hawkesbury Agricultural College, is thoroughly versed in the subject of Australian trade,- is brimful of energy, and,endowed with quite uncommon tact.

If anybody could have kept the commercial flag of Australasia flying in South Africa it would have been Mr Valder, and his sympathies were quite wide enough to give a helping hand to New Zealand.. We are quite prepared to believe his statement that Australia has been able to hold her own in the Cape markets such as they are. And they are deplorably bad, no doubt. But the phrase ■"■ holding her own " is not to be taken as implying that Australia has ever enjoyed anything! like the share that she might have got ;but for the closely organised.-.-,:trade monopolies in South Africa. As a-re-sult of the war and the abnormal prices that ruled during that unhappy period,

many supply companies were established with immensely overloaded capital, and when tho slump came after the declaration of peace, it was necessary to maintain profits at an unnatural level to pay even the smallest dividends. /'A ring .was formed against which we have -been obliged to fight ever since. The ring itself had interests in tho Argentine, so that the South American competition was, so to say, double-barrelled. Heroic attempts have been made' by the Cape Parliament and others to combat the ring, but so far without much effect, and with tne acute depression now prevailing we-have reason to fear that the Australasian contributions to the Cape and Johannesburg markets will approach the vanishing point.