SERIOUS DEPRESSION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17229, 8 April 1930, Page 7

SERIOUS DEPRESSION

BUSINESS IN AUSTRALIA AUCKLANDER’S COMMENT (Special to the Herald.) AUCKLAND, this day. “A visit, to tiie theatres or to largo hotels in Australia provides little outward evidence of the depression, hut it becomes very real during the most casual oonversatkm with business men,” said Mr. D. Robertson, assistant general manager of the Farmers’ Trading Co., who returned to Auckland by the Niagara. At a luncheon tendered to Rotarians by the Sydney Chamber of Commerce lie had met men interested in the timber and brick industries who had informed him that a reduction in output of 48 per cent, had taken place. Others had said that the returns of large department stores had decreased by from 10 to 25 per cent., and employees were compelled to work short time and go on a week’s holiday every 10 weeks.

Mr. Robertson said it was obvious that Australia was facing a lean time. It was also apparent from the efforts that the Federal Government was making to meet the position that the process of adjustment was going to be .long and trying. It would tax the best, brains of the country, and call for the wisest counsels on the part of the leaders of Labor.

Mr. Harvey Turner, of Turner and Growers, Ltd., Auckland, who also returned by the Niagara, said business seemed to he worse in Sydney than in Melbourne, and worst of all in Adelaide, where lie found prices for clothing, for example, ridiculously low. It was evident that retailers had had to make drastic reductions in order to sell anything at all. There were signs that wage cuts, where necessary, would not he so strongly resisted as such reductions usually were. The New South Wales railwaymen had taken their cut in good part, possibly owing to the example of the new general manager, Mr. Cleary. He had been appointed at a salary of £7500, hut decided to accept £SOOO, and now he had decided to take only £2500.