RETURNING PROSPERITY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19100, 22 August 1936, Page 5

RETURNING PROSPERITY

INDICATIONS IN BRITAIN EARNINGS BY RETAILERS INCRE ASI NG EMPLOYMENT (British Official Wireless.) Reed. 10 a.m. RUGBY, Aug. 20. Besides the record industrial production during the second quarter of the current year, as shown in the British index, other indications of returning prosperity, following upon the excellent overseas trado' returns for July and hotter employment figures, are contained in the improved earnings by retailers, whose receipts to date this year show an increase on 1935 of £2,871,000. Plans for factories and workshops have doubled in value from £627,600 to £1.251.200, and the production of consumers' goods is reflected in the recent advances in retail \sales (which have reached new high levels. The half-yearly analysis of the age and distribution of unemployed men and women made- by the Labour Ministry shows that while there was a reduction between May 1935 and May 1936 in the numbers of 'unemployed in nearly every age group, the reduction was greater proportionally among persons under 36 years of age. Men under 35 were 44.9 per cent of all unemployed men: in May of 1935, but in May. 1936, the percentage had fallen to 41.6. AMERICAN COMPARISON TOURISTS ASTONISHED EVIDENCE IN LONDON LONDON, July 28. A number of experienced American business observers now in London on holiday, and business trips told a representative of the Daily Telegraph yesterday that they had been astonished by the many evidences of prosperity they found in London. Mr. John D. Lester, a Brooklyn mcrchant now in London, said: "With business depression still acute in most parts of the world, I imagined that the reports we have been reading of an upward trend in Britain were optimistic nonsense.

"But my first day in the streets of London showed fairly clearly that the situation had not been exaggerated. The shops are stocked with costly goods and even luxuries, and your people arc buying them. "There seem to me to be many more new motor cars on the roads than one finds nowadays in American cities. The people are extremely well dressed and appear Happy and* contented, in contrast to many in the French towns I have recently seen."VISIT BY ROCKEFELLER SIGNS OF CONFIDENCE BUSINESS OUTLOOK NEW YORK, July 27. Mr. John D. Rockefeller, jun., who returned here to-day in the Queen Mary, declared that he had been greatly impressed by the air of prosperity in London. "I have never seen such prosperity as there is in England, especially in London," ho said. "It is almost impossible to get rooms in the hotels. They say they are doing the greatest business since the depression, and as far as I could see the city is filled with Americans, who are staying there instead of going to the Continent." It was five or six years, he said, since he had been in London.

He was immediately impressed by the atmosphere of confidence and the manifold signs of business recovery, but declined to make any comparison between Great Britain and the United States in their progress towards recovery. Mr. Rockefeller declared that the Queen Mary epitomised the British spirit of .progress and efficiency. "I found the liner very delightful," he observed, "and always very comfortable, even when going at great speed."