All this revival of trading activity thas been well focussed in the successful Trade Fair now being held at the Great World and recently opened by the General Oficer Commanding Troops, Malaya. A few facts, taken from a local paper may be of interest. "The number of stalls applied for 149. This year's Fair, therefore, will be twice the size of the successful enterprise held in May, 1993, at which stalls were taker Even a cursory examination of the stalls was enough to convince us that traders are facing life with a new optimism. To begin with considerable trouble had been taken to make the lls look attractive, something that {ig not always done in this country. One Insurance Company had gone to the trouble of making a model Chin-jose house, and of furnishing it with Chinese furniture a and pictures on the no wonder that there was alw throng outside this port Every place had been in some way or another so that people felt compelled to look, often to. come in, and perhaps thereafter to do}
One of the reasons, of course, is that the long uncertainty about the rubber position is over. We do know where we are, and where we shall be. For months now the price of rubber has been slowly rising, and one important thing to note is that even when restriction was announced the Price did not suddenly bound high But moved up sedately as if even the announcement of restriction was not Being to deftect the steady course of commodity that now realized its importance la world affairs.
"At the time of writing the price is nearly 25 cents locally, and at the beginning of the year it was rising 16 cents, £0 that the rise has been steady and we all hope that it will not much higher.
But the mere stock-market effect of the price of rubber is nothing compared with th" concrete effect of the ash received by the country's peasant try. A few cents rise means millions of dollars in the country, and these millions of dollars are fckily very soon spent by those who receive them. This has helped to lead to our remarkable trade revival, The Malays do not put aside for a rainy day, they fare only too glad to spend the cash when they have any to spend!
An Epidemic of Strikes Meanwhile, after quite an epidemic of strikes among tailors and such workers, we have had a major strike on our Iceal railways. More than 1,200 persons downed tools and came out of work at Kuala Lumpur recently. 'The strike fever rapidly spread throu-shout the country. Volunteers were Called for and services were maintain ed with difficulty. The strikers' grievances were carefully considered. Most of them the Government flatly jected, a few of them were allowed, fand the' men were told to return work or they would lose their Jobs The men did return, their leaders having counselled moderation in the end. Those who have discussed this ecent strike with the writer agree that the men were very badly led, and that of the demands were am "try-on", and that actually ther very lottie for the men to grumble at, a sign of coming prosperity, for it is These strikes, to, may be taken og {elt that there is money in the country once again, and cuts that were cheerfully borne until now are now Fesented. The planters have not been slow to show what they feel on this subject, and it seems probable that. very soon all of, them throughout the country will have their cuts restored. What this will mean in general all round trade improvement may soon be guessed when it is considered how much money will circulate.
One of the main effects of such a 'Trade Fair as this Is to inform the general public in a concrete way What it {8 possible to buy and where. We may read advertisements in the press, we may Know well our own particular shops, but we are often too Ineurious to go' out of our way to seek new things in new localities. In such a thing as a Fair we are saved all trouble, we can go from stall to stall within a second, and what was! formerly merely a name to us becomes in a twinkling a conerete reality.
Let me give one instance of this. I had often heard about the Imperial Typewriter, something made in Lelcester, something written about by J.
Priestley in his recent book "English Journey", but T had never seen sucha machine, and was not at all convinced. that England could" yet make a satisfactory typewriter. And. then T happened to walk in casually to the stall at the Great World the other night. Inside was a keen young expert, who knew his Job, did not pester you, but within a few minutes had convinced you that here was one that the word has yet seen" Now it the finest ihingy in ters
may be that no direct business resulted from that quarter of sri hour: spent in that stall, but an impression has been created, one will remember can afford a new This is a very striking reason for such a Fair, and the promoters are highly delighted, and not a little surprised, "at the "success "of the Stock and Trades Exhibition The success of the Fair at the Great World is all the more remarkable when it is remembered that only a few weeks ago, in April 1, we had another and very similar sort of trade exhibition. Actually, this exhibition Was supposed to be mainly for cattle, ut as foot-and-mouth-disease prevented any cattle being present it had perforce to turn itself into a trade exhibition pure and simple. That there {s room in successive months for two similar trading shows of this kind, and that within a few weeks the dig annual Agri-Horticultural Show at Kuala Lumpur is once more to be opened, shows in what condition trade is at the moment here.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.