JOTTINGS BY THE WAY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3818, 7 October 1936, Page 6

JOTTINGS BY THE WAY

(By

Ian Rosach)

Certain classes of employers, such as grocers, butchers and others utilising youth labour as delivery agents are finding it increasingly difficult in obtaining boys. While one has every sympathy with business men harradsed by such circumstances, yet broadly speaking it is a good sign, for it means that boys and their parents are realising that blind alley occupations are not desirable. With the Government again employing Civil Service recruits, many boys are preparing themselves for admission to the Civil Service, or for engagement in those callings that promise something like permanent employment with chances of promotion. It was refreshing to read of the stand taken by Mr W. J. Jordan, High Commissioner of New Zealand, at Geneva. I yield to none in my admiration for Britain and things British, but I do think that we as a Dominion have the right; or rather exercise such right, to place our views fearlessly before any gathering, be it the League of Nations or an Imperial Conference. Mr Jordan’s speech was an excellent one and he has made a most auspicious opening of his career as our representative at Home, or abroad. I certainly do not agree with Mr Doidge’s contention that he threw a spanner into the wheels of the work of the League. Mr Doidge’s remarks can be taken as political capital in the by-election. The spate of books on New Zealand’s economic and political life continues, and Henry J. Kelliher has issued (i striking-looking book entitled “New Zealand at the CrossRdads.” The author is the editor of “The Mirror,” an Auckland social' magazine, and he was lately appointed by the Government to the direc- ■ torate of the Reserve Bank. Mr Kelliher’s book is mostly a tirade against bankers as the big bad wolf responsible for our economic, or should it be uneconomic, ills, with a 'till at the press and the church for not helping to bring ‘about the new heaven as envisaged by monetary reformers. There is nothing new or striking in the book. Mr Kelliher is a supporter of the Labour Party, and in an epilogue written eight months after that Party had become the Government, he says (inter alia) that he has already regarded the State of unemployment as a true and infallible barometer of economic security and stability, and goes on to say that the disquieting fact remains that unemployment in New Zealand has not shown the favourable reaction it should have shown. “In fact one is forced to the unpleasant conclusion that the improvements of recent

months are due to psychological influences rather than to economic facts and causes. Another highly significant factor is the continuance of the abnormally low ratio of imports to exports, which shows clearly and unmistakably that New Zealand has derived little benefit from the record volume of exports over imports, a result that can be directly traced to the lack of purchasing power among the. masses of the people. Needless to say there is a reason, and this reason will be found in the official returns of our trading banks. These returns show a persistent downward trend in advances, and a persistent upward trend in deposits, with a. more or less corresponding increase in bank assets held overseas. If the facts as revealed by the returns have any meaning at all, they prove conclusively that the New Zealand trading banks have entered upon a policy of credit contraction, at a time when general trading conditions required a policy

of credit expansion.” Mr Kelliher is like all monetary reformers, very dogmatic in his assertions.

The book is splendidly printed and produced by Couriers (N.Z.) Ltd., Te Awamutu, the printers of the Hamilton Courier.