The Times correspondent, writing in Tuesday's issue, takes, on the
whole, a reassuring view of the economic condition of 'France. He admits that there has been during the last year a great deal of speculation in mining and metallurgical shares, and that the public, in many cases, may have fallen into traps laid by unscrupulous promoters. But as a set-off he points to the' prompt action of IL Caillaux, Minister of Finance, who introduced into the law regulating finance an 'article rendering obligatory the publication of a prospectus, or the equivalent of a summary of the essential details of a company, in the Journal Offixiel. In this way the supply of a minimum of information, by persons whose names and addresses would thereby at least be known, would be secured in the interests of would-be investors. For the rest, though foreign and home politics, industrial disturbances, and legiala- .tion involving increased taxation have exerted an unsettling influence, considerable business has been transacted, and prices have gone up. The fall in Renter and other principal investments, as he observes, is a phenomenon not confined to France, and the alleged exodus of capital has been exaggerated, the movement not having reached the mass of small capitalists, who, while they invest part of their fortunes in foreign State bondS, only hold a few shares, Which they keep at home or in
a French bank. On the whole, then, the writer is inclined to think that the anxiety felt in some quarters as to the pre- monitory symptoms of an economic crisis is unfounded.
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