CONDITIONS ABROAD

Taranaki Daily News, 23 April 1932, Page 20 (Supplement)

CONDITIONS ABROAD

AMERICA’S LOST MORALE. BRITAIN REGAINS CONFIDENCE. “The thing that struck me most in America was the fact that they seem to have lost their morale,” said Air. J. L. Law at Auckland on Sunday. Mr. Law is a cottou goods manufacturer, of Melbourne, who is a through passenger back to Australia by the Aorangi. “Conditions in America are practically chaotic. They are drifting,” he said. “They realise that they do not have the financial knowledge possessed by Great Britain, and they are looking to England for a lead. I should say that td-day there is a better feeling of goodwill toward England than I have ever experienced, in the States before. They realise that England is doing her utmost to pay her way and meet her debts, and the regard'in which she is held in the United States is very high. . “In my opinion the trouble is the United States is the failure of prohibition. It has given such, opportunities to gangsters and its enforcement is costing 1,000,000,060 dollars a year. The statement appeared in the New York papers while I was there that there are 30,000 ‘speak-easies’ openly operating in New York. “The president of the American Federation of Labour made the statement that there were 9,000,000 people out of work and 40,000,000 who were not getting sufficient food, clothing and shelter to keep thm at a reasonable standard of comfort. “In England the opinion is held that the country’s export trade will so expand and America’s export trade will so diminish that in a year or 18 months the demand for sterling will raise the exchange rate to six dollars to the pound.”] Mr. Law found signs of greatly increased activity in English textile factories and for orders that could previously have been filled in three weeks manufacturers were now asking four months. ' “One cannot help feeling that the Old Country is rapidly coming to the fore,” said Mr. Law.