WORLD-WIDE INFLUENCES.
I find little difficulty in assigning causes for the present depression, but the nature of those causes makes it more difficult to give an answer to the second point. In the first place, I think insufficient attention has been given to the world-wide effects upon industry and finance of the long continued fall in prices of commodities and the effect upon trade, especially as that fall has been followed by a great slump in American securities, all the leading financial and commercial centres having more or less taken a hand in the preceding Wall Street boom. This combination of lower prices both of _commodities and stocks has hit many of the Continental centres very hard, and Germany especially, I fancy, has found that the lower prices of goods and the effect upon trade has brought about a rather serious position. Other Continental centres, such as Amsterdam and Brussels, have also been affected, and Continental failures and Continental selling of securities have played a considerable part in the general depression of the last week or two.
Previous page
