A VISITOR'S OPINIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3495, 8 March 1921, Page 25

A VISITOR'S OPINIONS.

SYDNEY, February 28. Sir Henry Summon, a leading Hull shipowner, who is en route to New Zealand 111 search of trout fishing, takes a gloomy view of the shipping outlook. He clared that the depression was just commencing. The shipping world was confronted with the greatest slump the world had ever seen, in consequence of the enormous shipbuilding programmes in England and America. Already there were 6,000.000 or 7,000,000 tons laid up in English and American ports. England, he said, had pulled up her losses, and had now rather more tonnage than in 1914; while America had 8,000,000 or 9,000,000 tons more than before the war. The building orders which had been cancelled were enormous. Sir Henry Summon believes that the days ahead hold very serious possibilities, and that it will take many years to work off the surplus tonnage and get back to t position of balance. Sir Henry Sammon, expressed himself very candidly over the way in which things are run in Australia. He declared that all the white men he saw on the wharf could be gentlemen if the country were run rightly. Instead of that, they were doing niggers’ work, and doing it “ darned badly.” Australia, he said, was a black man’s country. It could be developed tremendously with black labour, but if things went on as they were the continent would pass to somebody else as sure as the sun rose.