SLIPPED ON SILVER.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20454, 6 November 1934, Page 1

SLIPPED ON SILVER.

Chinese Protest Confounds Advisers. (By PAUL MALLON). WASHINGTON, October 5. Life’s most embarrassing moment for the silver enthusiasts came the other day when China walked in and protested strongly against our silver policy. Since then, the New Deal advisers who were responsible for the Administration accepting this policy, have been very, very uncomfortable. They are supposed to be searching for a re-arrangement in the policy, which may be announced soon, if one can be found. Otherwise, the Administration may get some new silver advisers. A protest from China is not in itself a world-shaking development. What makes it so bad is that the silver boys always contended that their policy would restore the purchasing power of the Orient. Indeed it has been made on the floor of the Senate that the whole world depression is due to the depreciation of Oriental purchasing power, brought on by lower silver prices. Senatorial silver campaigners insisted that all that was needed to cure the depression throughout the world was to boost the price of silver. They were just 100 per cent wrong. No one here disputes China’s contention that the silver policy is hurting her. She can buy more with higher silver values, but can sell less. Her unfavourable trade balance drains silver from her country. In August, we sold her a third more than we did in August of last year, but we bought from her only half as much as we bought in August, 1933. She can pay j us the difference only by shipping silver.—N.A.N.A. Copyright.