AUSTRALIAN GLOOM

Taranaki Daily News, 17 July 1930, Page 9

AUSTRALIAN GLOOM

A WORRIED COMMUNITY

BUT THERE’S BRADMAN

“’One thing that strikes you more than anything else in Australia is the way in which the severe financial depression has developed into a deep mental depression affecting practically the whole community,” said Mr. D. A. Solomon, of the well-known Dunedin legal firm, who returned to Wellington by the Makura on Monday, from a three weeks’ holiday in the Commonwealth. Mr. Solomon had a good deal to say about Australian affairs in general, but this growing and gloomy mental condition, an outcome of the business and trade depression, had impressed him most of all. ‘T have been across to Australia several times in the past,” he said,* “but I have never seen it like that before.”

People in their offices, people whom he had seen many times before and who had always been normally bright and untroubled, were no longer the same, said Air. Solomon. They turned the subject to existing Australian conditions in the first few minutes of conversation, and their outlook was a worried and distressed one. Australian bugi-ness-men were all quite aware of the condition of their country, and many now thought twice before using their cars and then took a tram instead. A small thing in itself, said Mr. Solomon, but an index to the amount of actual worry that the situation was causing. Private expenditure was being cut down by most people, too. “Take for instance the trip across here from Sydney,” he added. “The Makura left on Thursday with only a handful of passengers. On the following day, the Mararna and the Maunganui left with even less. People can’t afford to travel, and that is the key to the position. There was just a scattering of people on board.”

Every new piece of legislation, Mr. Solomon continued, was like a sharp knock at the business men. They felt it more and more, and were getting more and more worried. One had only to walk along the biggest Sydney streets to find in almost every doorway the sign, “Shops and offices to let.” For an opinion on how long it would be before the outlook brightened, Air. Solomon could only quote the views of experienced business men. They had told him that they had not got right into it even yet, he said. Prices of general commodities, from the point of view of the average earner, were lower. Air. The exclusive shops, tained the same fallen since still, the where. vdM ’ said. JH-'