THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1933. “FACING BEAUTIES."

Wairarapa Age, 21 December 1932, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1933. “FACING BEAUTIES."

At the annual meeting of the United Kingdom Manufacturers’ and New Zealand Representatives’ Association, Mr. C. W. Salmon, vice-president of that organisation, urged his hearers to face realities. In elaborating this good counsel, he presented as outrageous a travesty of the facts of the existing world depression as has ever been set before a body of business men. After speaking of the destruction of wealth in the war, Mr. Salmon said: — We have been living on wealth which did not actually exist—in short, we have been playing a big game of “Let’s pretend." AU of us who were soldiers know that war meant destruction, and for that destruction we obviously have to

pay. . . . Does anyone need to be told that the slump came upon a world overflowing with wealth and that it has been and is marked by a tremendous destruction of real wealth and waste of the means of producing morel The facts from this standpoint were succinctly stated by Sir W. D. Hunt in the course of an address to the Canterbury Employers’ Association. His observations may be

set against Mr. Salmon's fantastic and wholly inaccurate picture:— By the end of 1928, ten years after the close of the Great War, not only had the world's industry completely ♦ recovered from war effects, but, taking the world as a whole, production was considerably greater and the average standard of living substantially higher than in 1913.

Most of us know what has happened since. No fact stands out more clearly than that powers of. production throughout the world are unimpaired and could be very easily and rapidly extended and amplified. The conception of a great dearth of wealth due to war destruction is a pure figment of the imagination. The depression was brought about, not by any shortage of wealth, but by failure to control and arrest a fall in prices which has paralysed production or robbed the producer in great part of a just reward. If this country is to be set again on the highroad to prosperity, a fair and equitable relationship must be established between its export trade returns, its working costs and its debt charges. Our troubles certainly are not due either to a shortage of real wealth or to inability to increase the production of wealth. Let us, as Mr. Salmon said, face realities, having first determined that they are realities and not delusions.