DRIVING AWAY CAPITAL.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 97, 22 April 1909, Page 3

DRIVING AWAY CAPITAL.

(By Frank Morton.) At the conference of Chambers of Commerce- held in Wellington last week there were some very p£o Is as are not really content- to SvTfor ever in a fool's paradise. Extracts from the remarks ot All N KeHle, Napier :-The stringency, an the money, market was entirely owing to the large amount of money that had been withdrawn from the counSy— the result of low rates of interest and the mortgage tax of 6s 3d in the £• J*ew Zealand banks in 1902 and up till the end of 1906, had from two to three millions surplus between deposits and advances. At the end of 1907 that surplus was reduced to £800,000, and at the end of Dumber, 1908 the ™*te*<>^™ millions was exhausted. J.ho o.iti&i See hf the position of the hanks as fc : the Kd. He could not make out wmmm pe°P^? vearlhad been phenomenally or seven m<>ney prospeiw^ ei b e cell made during financial m&ti™tvmi i Advailices to let^S^Sh^-mo.eyto from the remarks of Mr D. TNathJn Wellington :-He quite Xiand we%n a satisfagtory s tate. We had energy, and *c had -la bom. The thing needed was capital. country. Money is tight now,, and money is going to ; be tighter simply ESe we are doing everything^ our legislative power to drive monej away. It is all very well to yabber everlastingly 'about democracy and the bilious dream of Socialism; but when capital o-oes, employment ceases, and your ramping democrat is m about as hopeless and uncomfortable a position as an agitator on a derelict might occupy. This is .not the Golden Age, and few there be in a state ot innocence. We have to take things an general pretty much as we find them. Capital, as things go now, is a necessity. Capital is not easily enticed, but it is very easily frightened. _ We have been iu'dustriously frightening it for a. dozen years. Now we are going to feel the pinch. We may as well open our eye® to the facts.