“WONDERFUL EFFORT.”

Taranaki Daily News, 18 January 1923, Page 8

“WONDERFUL EFFORT.”

TRADERS AND THE SLUMP. Discussing the decline in imports into New Zealand in an interview in London, Mr. R. W. Dalton, formerly British Trade Commissioner, said ho regarded the failing off as a natural sequel to the overloading of shipments in the period which began about March, 1920, and ended in April or May, 1921. During 1920 the imports were valued at about £60.000,000. and over the whole of the period mentioned reached something like £100,000,000. ‘•Goods were reaching Now Zealand from Great Britain, lie said, much faster than they could be taken up by merchants, but it is greatly to their credit that the traders met their obligations gallantly as time went on, and at the end of the period there was probably not a quarter of a million's worth of goods turned down through failure to meet drafts. It was a wonderful effort under very trying circumstances. ‘‘There was a disposition on the part, of New Zealand traders to believe that the British shippers were unloading goods on them that were unsaleable elsewhere —a belief which I did my best to prove wrong. What actually happened was that goods, which had been ordered long before and which could not then be delivered, owing to lack of tonnage, were sent on as fact as possible a«s soon as ships were available. The Now Zealand buyer had thought that the orders were cancelled automatically, and the English shipper did not know that the New Zealand market was being overloaded —a misunderstanding that would not have occurred if there had been greater facilities in each country for gathering and distributing trade information.”