SHIPOWNERS ON CRISIS.

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18851, 23 January 1933, Page 6

SHIPOWNERS ON CRISIS.

It is from shipowners, if from anybody, that we may expect to find out the realities about the decline in trade. The annual meetings recently reported of the large British shipping lines show the effect of the economic depression, for the companies' profits have dwindled from affluence tc vanishing point, and the outlook for ttie shareholders and others Interested in this great branch of the transport system is far from bright. In the world to-day there are 88 per cent, more ships and 50 per cent, less trade than there were before the war. On these two facts can be constructed the long tale of the miseries, privations and discontents of the time. And the reasons?—Restrictions to Imports and the subsidising of exports, The remedies set out are equally familiar and spurned—to lei the debtor pay in the only ways thai he can pay and not to Interfere with economic efficiency for nationalist reasons. The pica is for a return to free competition, though it is, of course, a qualified pica, for the shippers themselves are advocating the limitation of their own tonnage. The manifesto adds that international trade requires that the debtor must not exclude himself from the world market by maintaining an inflated level of costs, of wage slruclure, and prices. But one wauls also to know what, -f wage reductions are part of the scheme, is Hie rest of the policy for reorganisation and recovery. Tho Economic Conference (to which a copy of the manifesto is to ho given) will have In keep llial general aim in view when it seeks to establish Ihc bases of an internaiional revival.