INDUSTRIES IN EUROPE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19456, 12 October 1926, Page 9

INDUSTRIES IN EUROPE.

RESTORING PROSPERITY. ANGLO-GERMAN EFFORT. CONFERENCE OF MAGNATES. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received 5.5 p.m.) A. and N.Z. LONDON. Oct. 11. Capital totalling £10.000,000,000 was represented yesterday at the conference of British and German industrialists and financiers at the country residence of Lieutenant-Colonel W. Ashley, Minister of Transport. Of this total £4,700,000,000 was British money. The actual decision of the conference was to appoint a standing committee representing German and British industrialists in equal proportions, in order to pursue an investigation regarding the prospects of mutual assistance being given in re-establishing prosperous industry in Europe, and in augmenting the opportunities for profitable employment. The details of the conversations are secret , but it is understood that a hopeful and wholesome industrial understanding was reached. It is absolutely denied that international trusts are to be formed as the outcome of the conference. The British chairman of the standing committee is Sir Robert Home, a former Chancellor of tho Exchequer, and the German chairman is Dr. Duisberg, president of the Association of German Industry.

AN ECONOMIC PEACE. RELAXING THE TENSION. POLITICAL WAR TO TERMINATE. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. (Reed. 9.5 p.m.) BERLIN. Oct. 10. The German Chancellor, Dr. Marx, addressed a mass meeting at Essen. In the course of his remarks he referred to the European steel agreement. Dr. Mars said people could not conclude economic peace pacts and at the same time be in a state of political warfare. A further relaxation of tension might therefore be expected in tho political realm. The Chancellor renewed his assurance that Germany meant to collaborate loyally with the other members of the League of Nations. He said he had every confidence that n satisfactory solution would be forthcoming from the recent conversations at Thory between the French and German Foreign Ministers, M. Briand and Herr Stresemann. A great iron and steel trust agreement, known 'as the " Iron Pact," regulating the annual output in Germany, France, Belgium and Luxemburg, was signed in Brussels at the end of last month. British industrialists did not participate in the agreement, which was hailed in Berlin as the greatest trade deal since before the war. The four contracting parties are bent on eliminating competition with each other within their own frontiers. They are also bent, if not on eliminating competition abroad, at least on taking its edge off. In practice the difficulty is that in France and Belgium tho administrative apparatus for co-ordinating the iron and steel industries is far less complete than it is in Germany. In Germany alone is a national iron and steel policy feasible in the sense that production, output prices, import and export quotas can be controlled by a central body in accordance with uniform guiding principles. Thus the French and Belgian iron and steel industries may have to reckon with considerable difference of opinion on policy within their own ranks before the satisfactory working of the "Iron Pact" will be possible, although the draft agreement between the four parties showed that such' a possibility is believed to exist, and thai closer' co-ordination of the different groups in Franco and Belgium is likely to take place.