The Manawatu Daily Times Spend Now!

Manawatu Times, Volume 59, Issue 222, 22 September 1934, Page 4

The Manawatu Daily Times Spend Now!

“it is wise to-day to spend largely and freely, ' was the advice given by Professor Murphy to a Wellington gathering this week. Coming from so noted an authority on economies such advice may well be carefully considered, and it is significant that tlie hard-headed and cautious business-men of Dunedin have been thinking definitely and constructively along the same lines. A committee representative of most of the business and administrative organisations of that city, beginning with the City Counicl, Chamber of Commerce, and Manufacturers Association, has issued a manifesto urging the loosening of civic and private purse-strings.

There are works, these leaders say, to be ordered, improvements to be made, additions to comfort or appearance to be provided for by many members of the community to whom money is not wanting for such things. What is needed is a loosening of the purse-strings on a more liberal scale in order that a concerted push may be given at a time when it might be most effective, providing as it would an impetus to the definite trend towards better times that is being felt throughout the Dominion.

There is plenty of work both of a public and private character waiting to be done. Why not do it now -! If such work were hastened hundreds of pounds would be put into circulation; full-time'work at standard rates would be made for hundreds of men who are now languishing on relief doles; and their earnings would have value for the whole community, including the spenders. Surplus funds for such purposes would be kept to the owners’ hurt if, by keeping them frozen, they delay the return of prosperity.

The plan proposed in Dunedin is that which has been called the Bristol plan, after the city in which it was first applied with a success which has caused it to be imitated in not a few other parts of the world. His Excellency the Governor-General has said of the Bristol scheme that “it was an excellent idea to keep employed a large number of men who otherwise might not only have been unemployed, but might have been eating out their hearts with disappointment and losing hope. He desired to commend the scheme, and to congratulate employers in the city who had taken it up in the interests of men who would otherwise be unemployed.”

The southern committee has drawn up a list of seventy ways in which money can be spent, from the smallest sums to larger ones, on objects that would not be regarded in any ordinary time as luxuries, and should not be regarded so now those with a margin of cash. When their expenditure makes employment and helps in hastening the departure of depression, as well as serving their own needs and creating, in themselves and others, a new feeling of well-being consonant with the change from winter to spring, it will be twice blest.

But why not make such a campaign Dominion-wide? Palmerston North could certainly follow Dunedin’s example with profit. Here is an opportunity for the Chamber of Commerce.