BURNING MONEY.

Observer, Volume XXXII, Issue 20, 27 January 1912, Page 3

BURNING MONEY.

A Word in Season.

THE Old World pours many goods into New Zealand, and it may

appear to many people that huge wharves, crowded with incoming merchandise, are evidences of increased prosperity. The ability to purchase British or foreign goods is evidence that New Zealand has money to spend, although hardly evidence that it is all New Zealand's money. Speaking approximately, the gauge of national prosperity is at present the goods New Zealand is able to despatch overseas after using a portion for home consumption. The national wealth may be fairly approximated by regarding the difference between imports and exports as either money lost or gained and making allowances for the interest Tve have to pay on the National Debt. • » *

Last year we imported goods almost to the same amount as the amount of our exports. This is an indication that we as a nation are not quite so careful as we ought to be. We seem to take in money with the one hand and pay it out almost to the stme extent with the other, although one has to admit that every year is not like last year. Our population increases slowly, and our apparent necessities increase at a much greater rate. Although New Zealand is the most remote portion of the Empire she allows herself to be the most dependent on oversea aid.

The aggressiveness of labor and the generial belief that notiihing is holy -unless it is in its shirt-sleeveß, handicaps dealing with our own material on our own ground. "We are a very good customer both in the goods marlet and in the money market. If the overseas goods market and the

'overseas money market were not available to us we should have to stand on our own foundation, and we should talk lees twaddle about leading the world. While our imports in value are close on the heels of our at present the lifeblood of town and country alike—we have to keep the pawnbroker supplied with those few millions a year interest.

The money kings, whom the hornyhanded of New Zealand so much detest (and, who, of course, indirectly supply the horny-handed with jobs), are as familiar with the signs of the financial barometer as Mr Bates is familiar with the vagaries of his meteorological instruments. -The aggressive person who calls the earth to witness his sufferings because he can't get a few shillings a week, will never blame the London money market, and the great financiers know our ledgers and all about our debit account, and weigh us up in a calculating way that takes no cognisance of strikes or the demand of a few more sections of labor for more borrowed spoil. New Zealand will not become bankrupt, for at some time or other it will learn to know that speculation in land and the dear delights that make men suddenly rich have no ultimate effect on the credit side of the nation's ledger..