UNSETTLED MARKETS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20991, 2 April 1930, Page 5

UNSETTLED MARKETS.

CONDITIONS IN AMERICA. EXAGGERATED REPORTS OF DEPRESSION. (Special to Daily Times.) - WELLINGTON, April 1. “Economic conditions -in the United States are somewhat unsettled Just now, but you may depend upon it that much ol what you see in the newspapers over here is a little, perhaps more than a little, exaggerated,” said Mr Elgin Stoddard, vice-chairman and general manager of the C. C. Moon and Co. Engineering Company of San. Francisco, who, with Mrs Stortdard, arrived in Wellington by the Ulimaroa to-day. “Industrial and commercial conditions arc quite fair in America,” he proceeded, “ though, of course, we did have a severe Stock Exchange disturbance which caused manufacturers to shorten sail a bit,, and, in consequence, put a good many .men out of work. But do not think that any fundamental conditions have been sorb ously disturbed or _ that the upset will long continue, I view optimistically the reports we have received since we left San Francisco. Everybody expected that the Stock Exchange crash would occur sooner or later, and when it did take place it was only what we had all anticipated. Except those who had been gambling rather unwisely in stocks, nobody was much hurt. They gambled mostly, of course, on margins, which is always an unwise business for people of limited means.

“I think that the financial and industrial conditions are fundamentally all right, but there has been a shutting down of various factories and a slowing up of some industries because people are buying less than they were during the orgy of stock speculation, when everybody thought they had more money than they actually possessed. The stores complained of a good deal of dullness at the beginning of the year and naturally curtailed their purchases, leading to the slowing up of industry referred to; but in general it is said in America that so long as the people—workmen and capitalists alike—are still buying automobiles, both for business and pleasure, things cannot be in a very bad way financially.”