AFTER THE BANQUET

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10963, 27 July 1921, Page 5

AFTER THE BANQUET

THE “WASH-UP” WHEN THE TIDAL WAVE OF DEPRESSION CAME. "WE OUGHT TO HAVE KNOWN.” Referring to the ups and downs of recent years, Mr G. W. Leadley said at the Farmers’ Union conference yes tol’dav: —The collapse of the wool market, and the somewhat unsatisfactory character of the season, owing to diminished rainfall, together with the constantly recurring and vexatious labour troubles, induced manv to look somewhat wistfully into the future. The constant advice of those who were commercially and politically weatherwise, urging us to take cover, did not tend to create confidence, whilst the clangour end clamour of those who spoke so gloomily of the coming slump, did not serve to avert it, and, finally, soon ter the opening of the new year the avalanche descended with a weight and a suddenness which no one or very few were prepared for, and the depression —previously only « foreboding possibilitv—became an actual and a very uncomfortable fact. Of course, we should have anticipated it, and have been prepared for it. We ought to have known that it was Impossible for the prices, which had ruled during the greater part of the war period and afterwards, to continue. Wd should have remembered that after every banquet there must be a “waah-up,” and that after the gaigantupan feast which we have had, the washing-up would be a very unpleasant one. But we dad not, and now, we have the ‘‘morning after” feeling, ia, There were features about the sudden j change in the financial and commercial j atmosphere which are difficult of ex- : planation. The tidal wave of depression j which struck our shores last February I seems to have had its rise in America. ! Now America, of all countries that, ! were involved in the great war, must [have suffered the least. She came in j last, and, for the earlier period of the i war must have been reaping enormous profits from the sale of necessaries to the. combatants. America’s actual ex-' | penditUTe on war equipment was, pro- : portion ately to her, wealth and popula--1 toon, trifling as compared with other 1 countries less favourably situated. Why j was it, then, that the wave of depression was so soon felt in TJ.S.A., and rose so high? This is a problem I confesi I have not been able to find an answer for, excepting this: that the relations between the nations of the world are now so interwoven that an injury done to one must perforce affect the others. No nation & independent. Experiment has shown us that no' country can stand alone and unaffected by the misfortunes of another country, or by the general financial situation. In the , wards of a leading publicist, "Finance ia international.”