"WONDERFUL EFFORT."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18297, 13 January 1923, Page 11

"WONDERFUL EFFORT."

TRADERS AND THE SLUMP. Discussing the decline in imports into New Zealand in an interview, in London, Mr. R. W. Dalton, formerly British Trade Commissioner, said he regarded the falling off as a natural sequel to the overloading of shipmends in the period which began about March, 1920, and ended ,in April or May, 1921. During 1920 the imports were valued at about £60 000,000, and over the whole of the period mentioned reached something like £100,000,000. "Goods were reaching New Zealand from Great Britain," he said, "much faster than they could be taken up by merchants, but it is greatly to their credit that the traders met their obligations gallantly as time went on, aud at the end of the period there was probably not a. quarter of a million's worth of goods turned down through failure to meet drafts. It was a wonderful effort under very trying circumstances. "There was a disposition on the part of New Zealand traders to believe that the British shippers were unloading goods on them 'that were unsaleable elsewhere* —a belief which I did my best to prove wrong. What actually happened was that goods, which had been ordered long before and which could not then be delivered owing to lack of tonnage, ware sent on as fast as possible as soon as ships were available. The New Zealand buyer had thought that the orders, were cancelled automatically, and the English shipper did not know that the New Zealand market was being overloadeda misunderstanding that would not have occurred if there liad been greater facilities in each country for gathering and distributing trade information."