SERIOUS POSITION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 218, 14 September 1934, Page 9

SERIOUS POSITION

e, PROBLEM OF SUPPLIES j h [S AN ECONOMIC FALLACY q LONDON, August 7. The situation in Germany in regard to the purchase of raw materials is dealt with by the correspondent of The Tinies. British cotton spinners have ceased work on German orders | until outstanding accounts have been ■ paid, which is a serious thing for tho German textile industry. The official Anglo-German negotiations about this question of long-stand-ing payments due to British coal, cotl' ton. and other exporters, the correspon1 dent writes, and of ensuring that they x will receive payment in future, have been proceeding in Berlin for some time, as yet without results. In Ger2 man business circles the situation is causing much misgiving. Der Ring, ’ a weekly journal representing orthodox ( political and economic thought, speaks [ ’ in. its current number with most un- j > usual candour about these things. “In recent weeks (it says) our i foreign ex’? han go difficulties and the ; • problem of raw material supplies to i > which they lead have necessitated . numerous and incisive official incursions into economic life, the limit of which can barely be seen, and which resembles in their effect tho ripples caused by a stone thrown into water. At first there were bans on the purchase of raw materials, which then gave way to the obligation to obtain various authorisations. Then followed restrictions on methods of manufacture ! on consumption, and. eventually, direct I limitation of production. Official Interventions* i p “All these officials interventions . . . ’< have shown the business world and the j’ nation, with a •clarity only events and i 1 not words could bring, that we are not ? alone in tho world. Nothing could t more graphically exhibit the tremen- p dous importance of the foreign exchange and raw materials problem to |* German industry—that is, to the whole question whether we can work or not— ? than the fact that so well occupied a } branch as the textile industry has to s bo forced to introduce short-time by law because we have to be sparing i 1 with raw materials. Hardly a day L passes now without some order of the | Economic Ministry or one of the vanous Control Departments for raw materials. The effects go ever deeper, l_ and the end may all too speedily be a state of afftUw’s in which the freedom v of private enterprise is abolished and t disappears, to be followed by official , v control.” | v This is a bare statement of the facts | (adds The Times <correspondent). | 0 The textile industry, under the impulse f of the stimulated demand for uniforms, $ experienced a great revival in 1933 and c i early 1934. Now it is to be allowed to t< relapse, because those raw materials tl which are its life blood cannot be paid t( for. The fallacy in an economic policy ! W'hich aims simultaneously at making r Germany self-sufficient and at stimulating her home industries stands re- iv< vealed.