The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1922-01-03
Many-Sided Business Year
Ends With Rally Predicted
Painful Progress Made in Trade World During Trying
Period of Reconstruction Following Boom of
War Days, but Outlook Now Improves

h
Known. Such unanimity in estimates of
reduction of yields from the proceeding
year has rarely been witnessed in the
| country s history. For this, reduced
areas and unfavorablc weather condi-
tons were the reasons assigned. If these
reductions in production indicated from
1920. a bumper year, had been offset by
higher prices, some compensations might
have been afforded, but prices in mid
October were the lowest in many years
| potatoes and apples being the only eXcep-
| ton to decreases from the preceding
year.
The corn crop lost , per cent in yield
: from 1920, wheat 0.S per cent, oats % per
| per cent, hay ID per cent, potatoes 20 per
cent, apples "A per cent, tobacco 81 per
cent, barley 10 per cent, all cereals 10
| per cent.
| 1t is only fair to say that the depart
ment of agriculture discovered that it
under est mated the cotton crop heavily,
and the feeling in the late fall was that
other crops, but especially wheat, had al
so been estimated below the real out
come.
| Heavy Failures.
/ Liquidation in the form of failure was
! heavy in 1921, as already stated, both
number and liabilities exceeding any pre-
| vious records. For this, low prices of
| farm products in the country and restrict
| ed employment in the cities reduced
purchasing power, in shOrt-were mainly
responsible. Other contributory causes
were the perpendicular drop in values of
goods, many concerns finding themselves
hung up with unstable products. Back
of all this, however, it must be noted
/ that additions TO the business commun-
Ilty in the past two years were enOr-
mously large, II per cent over 1919, and
/ 10 per cent as compared with 1915, pre-
ceding year of stress, with which cOmpari-
| sons will naturally be made.
In any effort to weigh up prospects for
| future business. one who has events of
| the recent past in mind must be impressed
! by the fact that most ideas of real pro-
gresS in domestic and indeed in foreign
trade revOlve about the question of costs
whether of raw materials. labor, trans
/ pOrtatiOn or selling. No sensible person
wishes to quarrel with the desire of or
ganiZed labor to get all il can in reason,
but any one who remembers the futile
stand of the railroad men against the
July reduction must be impressed with
the fact that any trade that insists on
being placed on wage pedestal of its own
is bound to suffer ultimately In this
connection. the stand against reductions
of many in the building trades and the
attitude of the coal miners who talk of
demanding advances next April must
seem puerile, especially in view of the de
preston and short time that has ruled
the fuel trades for year past.
Foreign Situation
( The foreign situation seems to have
many more elements of strength than
4 would seem possible from q cursory
glance at the past. If the calculations of
the department of commerce as to volume
versus value of trade are correct, q better
demand exists than a year agO-at a
price. The political situation abroad
looks far better than one or two years
MI nf
central European exchanges. The col
lapse of the printing press brand of
money should have some lessons for our
own medicine men, and quack doctors
/ who would Great values by fiat. With
protection guaranteed by the stronger
powers against incurSiOns of the eastern
hordes. who have admitted that their own
combination of socialism and murder has
failed to bring about the millennium,
central Europe should rally because its
J peoples are mainly workers and have not
! arrived at the point. reached by some ad-
vanced thinkers nearer home, where they
believe men can live by agitation alone
! The course of events in the past year.
, and especially since the late summer,
would seem TO point to the Normal cOndi-
! tons following the bursting of a boom
having made fair progress 1t was said
quite early in 1920 that we were expert
encing the secondary effects of the usual
panic depression. industrial stagnatiOn
/ and shutdowns without having had the
acute troubles that had preceded these
: in other years of stress. If reports are
! to be believed. the unemployment trouble
J is not so great as it was earlier last year
or in the last months of 1920. although
efforts of sunshine societies cannot close
our eyes to the fact that an unprecedented
amount of labor was displaced in mid
year.
With the close Of 1921 and the realiza-
ton that two years of liquidation and de-
preston have passed, the feeling of cheer
fulness is more marked than it was
Summed up. the business barometer is
now set at about fair" but courage and
ties of 1922.