AN END NEXT WEEK.

Wairarapa Age, 5 November 1930, Page 5

AN END NEXT WEEK.

IMPERIAL CONFERENCE MAKES PROGRESS. SOME SUGGESTED REASONS FOE SPEEDING UP. FACING TROUBLES AT HOME. United Press Association. —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. LONDON, November 3. Really substantial progress is now being made by the Imperial Conference, ensuring a likelihood of its ending next week. There is every prospect that Wednesday will see something definite emerge. For the moment everything has a legal flavour. Speeding up the Conference’s work has been ingeniously attributed to the desire of the Dominion Premiers to get home to face their own troubles, but there is the other side to the story. Mr MacDonald, apologising for his inability to attend the Conference to-day and to-morrow, explained that there had been threats to move the adjournment of the House of Commons, if he is not present at the debates on the amendments to the Address-in-Reply. The Conference recommends the Governments of the British Commonwealth to introduce legislation for reciprocal old-age pensions throughout the Empire, and then to negotiate with each other to enable the system to operate. The Cotton Growing report reveals a marked increase in cotton growing in the Empire, but states that there is little prospect of extending production unless prices improve. The Committee recommends the maintenance of increased production and extended scientific investigation. The Shipping Committee recommends that in cases where inter-imperial trade is prejudiced owing to having no direct services, the matter should be referred to the Imperial Shipping Committee. EMPIRE TRADE. PROPOSALS BY CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE. RUGBY, November 3. Representatives of the Federation of the Chambers of Commerce of the British Empire were tb-day received informally by members of the delegations attending the Imperial Conference for the purpose of elaborating the resolutions on inter-imperial trade which were passed by the Congress last May.

Sir Shirley Benn expressed the federation’s view that the establishment of an Imperial Economic General Staff was essential, and said that the Federation would like to see an agreement reached between the eight Governments that no economic action likely to affect the rest would be taken without the General Economic Staff first being consulted. Sir Shirley Benn laid particular emphasis upon the need for agreements between His Majesty’s Governments assembled in the present Conference as to the use which they would make of such a bureau rather than upon the constitution of the bureau itself.