OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19248, 30 July 1932, Page 9

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

NEW ZEALAND OPINIONS The Root Troubles “Then vve come to the most interesting question as to whether the revenue has got to the bottom. My own opinion is that during the current year the revenue of the company will be worse than the revenue of the past year. it is no use endeavouring to analyse the position; it is not a question of good or of bad investments. The revenue is suffering in every direction. however carefully one’s investments have been made. The trouble j at the root of everything is the breakdown of international trade and the breaking down of the exchanges. Somebody in the world, sooner or later, will find a remedy for this state of things. We can only hope that the saviour, whoever he may be, will come forward in the near future.”—Viscount ' St. Davids, at the annual meeting of the Consolidated Trust. Mother Earth “The land will never come back to cultivation, the people will never be restored, whatever fiscal suport may be forthcoming from Governent. if the work is left to landowner and tenant. No one has attempted to supply the gap left by the disappearance of the landlord of the days that preceded death duties and a high income tax. It was, and is, the direct object of such taxation to distribute weath, to prevent the social and economic autocracy of one man in a rural district. It may be a good object . . . but no countryman can welcome its fulfilment until a substitute is found for the feudal land-owner, who, at the worst, usually performed the function of a cheap land bank in return for amenities rather than moneys . . . Half the country is in desperate, need of what used to be called estate management.” —Sir William Beach Thomas. Safe Banking i “It is not contended that the primj ary business of the banks is to make | profit for the shareholders. This ■ would be too narrow a conception of the function of banking and one that would not be tolerated in a commercial community, but it is, nevertheless, the first duty c,f banks to safeguard the interests of depositors who have entrusted their money to them. Should they fail 4 or weaken in their trust the whole structure of business would collapse. With this guiding principle ■ always in front of them the banks ! naturally seek to minimise their risk, and if any criticism may be levelled at j the conduct of banking during the past few years it is that too great consideration has been shown in the matter of overdraft borrowing, which, if overstrained. becomes a pernicious system holding danger net only to the borrower and the lender but to the country j at large.”—“Glasgow Herald.” A Season for Thinking “The thinker may be a blacksmith who believes that he has hit on a new and better method of tempering a particular steel, a sheepman who thinks that he has found a way of breeding for a perfect fleece in four changes of ram-strain, a house-painter who has an idea for a fireproof paint. If any cf these ideas are sound, they represent a substantial advancement in applied human knowledge, the establishment of new industries, or the supstantial improvement of an existing one. If they are not sound, mere following up by trial and error will only result in waste of money and I time. There is only one way to test ! their soundness and commercial applicability, and that is to check them against the sum total of the facts and principles which underlie them. And so the blacksmith, the sheepbreeder and the house-painter arrive eventually at the doors of the reference library.”—“The Bulletin” (Sydney). Orthodox Economy Nonplussed “The economics of to-day as taught by the orthodox are out of date because they were meant for a world situation in which famine and scarcity were the normal conditions and in which mankind was engaged in a fierce struggle against the forces of nature,” writes Commander J. M. Kenworthy in “Current History.” “Men had to save and hoard and put by for a rainy day. But now modern science and industry, with better means of transport and communication, have removed the spectre of famine and w'ant. The need now is to spend, consume and thereby use up the pverflowing abundance which every civilised community can produce. Mass production must be accompanied by mass consumption, otherwise society will either bankrupt itself or seek relief in warfare and destruction. Nevei. theless, we continue to urge the practice of thrift and penury, to deflate and restrict credits, when markets, warehouses and granaries are choked with unsaleable goods.”