SLACKNESS OF TRADE IN WELLINGTON.

Otago Witness, Issue 2675, 21 June 1905, Page 26

SLACKNESS OF TRADE IN WELLINGTON.

A WARNING ABOUT LAND BOOMS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, June 18. Many people here are beginning to lose faith in the reports of the Labour Department. The other day Mr Mackay was clearly shown to be in error in regard to the number of unemployed, and now the Labour Department's reports regarding the retail trade in Wellington are shown to bo erroneous. The Post has interviewed quite a number of those interested and best able to judge, and the evidence clearly points to a slackness of trade extending over the past three months. Mr Harris, of M. Harris and Son, Christchurch and Wellington, says the cause is the tightness of money through over-speculation in property. Tha assistant-manager of a well-known wholesale house that handles almost everything except soft goods and grocery said that during the last 12 months he had not seen in the retail trade the prosperity ihat the Government and the papers talkad about: Stocks left in the warehouse were proof that the retailer did not want them, which was proof that the consumer was backward, which in turn was destructive of the idea of a prosperous retail trade. He had had to write Home to his inquiring principals and inform them that trade was not always as roseate as the papers said. There was practically a stagnation, and he thought^ the reason was over-speculation Comparing- New Zealand with other coun tries, an extended experience of both led him to the conviction that the New Zealander preferred a superior article to an inferior one, but that "was not the case in Wellington at present, and the trade of four or five years ago was a quite different thing from the trade of to-day. Now nothing was going but the cheap article, and traders were compelled to "cut prices, and this oa.used a tendency to bring in inferior ar tides. Trade in" the country was a shads better than trade in Wellington. A head of a department in one of the largest soft goods warehouses stated that retail trade was not what it "should be as to soft goods. The.re was, with perhaps one exception, not a retailer in the city doin» the business he did this time last year. In the country it was better. Palmerston North was sound, but Taranaki and Wanganui were bad. In Taranaki they ha.l been paying too much for their land, th^ high price of which was a discount on tin exceptionally good prices our produce was getting in London. No doubt another dis count on the high prices of produce was the fact that we had over-exported, aud that our exports had now decreased, because we had not the stuff to send away. All this reflected on trade, even though wool-growers were now getting Is in pHf' 1 ; of 4id a couple of years ago. In the lifcy the cause of tho slacknei.s. which had bern marked during- the last few months, wa9 probably over-soeculation in high-price 1 property. Credit in some quarters was narrowing. To all these gentlemen the question was put whether the usual stereotyped report on tho retail trade, " fair." " good," or "prosperous." had a foundation in fact. They all styled it emphatically a prevarication ; yet the Labour Journal for Juie reports the retail trade Cl very good."