PAST AND PRESENT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 13, 13 December 1932, Page 6

PAST AND PRESENT.

The prevailing economic conditions, although causing much distress amongst many people, are not by any means the only depression through which this Dominion has passed. Comparison with the past should help people to face the present one firmly. In the ’eighties a very much smaller population was distressed by bitter harsliips. The country was ill-developed and recovery accordingly slow, so slow, in fact, that the ’nineties had well advanced before it came. A collapse in prices and values was the primary cause of .that slump, as it is of this; but there is of course one great difference. Being much more fully and variously developed, and strengthened by the accumulation of wealth, the Dominion is now much better able to bear and to overcome its troubles than in the bleak ’eighties or in other periods. Yet the country survived them and emerged stronger and sounder from each ordeal. If we accept the worst estimates of the misfortunes and afflictions due to the pi-esent price-collapse, they are less than the misery endured by New Zealanders fifty years ago or by the people of other countries to-day. There is no rush to escape these shores, as there was then. In fact, the movement is the other way; for New Zealand

is steadily gaining the reputation of being a good refuge from the troubles of other countries. There is of course a stern demand upon* the people of New Zealand at the present time, but not by any means intolerably stern. They must recognise and obey the facts. The pleasant political teachings that gain acceptance m prosperous days must be rejected. A saner and a more sober outlook and willingness to adopt a plainer way of living, at least temporarily, are required of everybody; but as the condition of reconstruction and renewed content this is not cruelly hard. After extravagance and indulgence and unchecked ambition, the way of common sense seems harder than it is. The country should know it, however, and cheerfully accept it as the single road to recovery.