A GOOD deal of attention is being given to the prospects of trade and commerce throughout the world.

These matters concern every country but none in greater measure than our own for we are to a very large extent the financial and commercial centre of the world.

Some people are concerned by what they perceive to be a coming depression in trade and their thoughts go back to the last depression which we certainly suffered severely but even then not as much as other countries. If another depression is coming will it be as severe as that?

Competent observers say it will not.

It is astonishing how great a change has come over the on diction of industry and commerce in the last 15 or 20 years.

Industry and commerce depend on the needs and the demands of mankind and the better a country is able to provide against a time of want the better it can preserve its industrial standard.

If we save money we can expect to continue to purchase goods when other people have to reduce purchases or go without some things altogether. It is obvious therefore that the more people there are in the world who can pay the way as consumers through a period of depression the less intensely and widely will that depression be felt.

A few years ago the only countries that could maintain such a standard of consumption were the United Kingdom, Germany and France but today the United States has practically overtaken those three countries in this respect and we have added at once to the first class of consuming countries a population of close on 100,000,000 people. The studying effects of these industrial reinforcements is enormous, it is felt not only in the countries named but it reacts on other countries who have not yet reached a stable position. In this way the general level throughout the world is raised and we therefore come to the conclusion that if there is to be a trade depression it will not be so long or so severe as those of the past.