RISING PRICES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 56, 16 March 1943, Page 4

RISING PRICES

THE letter appearing in last Friday's issue anent the serious rise which has taken place in the cost of ordinary children's apparel, represents the genuine reaction on the part of the average mother who is endeavouring to feed and clothe' a young family during the present difficult times. Oh yes, we all admit that wages are high, money is free, and that costs during war time go automatically skywards, but how many of us have access to the housewifes view point when the same little organiser is expected to clothe and maintain in reasonable comfort a rising young family of from two to four or five young New Zealanders. The food though not the greatest problem is highly priced; fruit, even in this, the mid season is still at a ridiculous figure. One only has to call to mind the small plateful which was illustrated in an Auckland daily last week and which cost the purchaser six shillings and threepence to realise the utter absurdity of the market. But these things as far as the country housewife is concerned are not the most pressing of her problems. The main feature of family expenditure to-day is not food, but clothing and our correspondent has hit the nail on the head when she compares the lot of those who are rearing a young family with those who have none. In a country like New Zealand where the wool clip last year realised £60,000,000, the prices quoted by our correspondent (we have her name and address and can vouch for their authenticity) for children's clothing is absolutely beyond all reason. We know that the war demands sacrifice; we realise that Army creates a demand for military clothing, uniforms, blankets and a hundred and one other articles of woollen manufacture; we appreciate too the overseas orders for tens of thousands of battle-dresses; but let us pause for a momentary stocktaking—don't we also owe a duty to our own people, the badly heckled civilian remnants who not only do three times the volume of work in order to provide men for the forces, but also carry the back-breaking load of taxation imposed by war expenditure and maintain the Patriotic quotas up and down the countryside. No! Well if we are not prepared to admit these facts, let us probe a.little further and get down to national fundamentals! Do we not owe a moral duty to the oncorrjng generation, the citizens of the future, the men and women of New Zealand's to-morrow? Surely we have time in the process of a war of adult responsibility, to give thought to the clothing and feeding of the children of the war years. And only through their natural guardians —their parents—can they be effectively assisted in this matter. Let no reader assume, that because he or she has had no reason to feel the weight of this new financial burden unduly, that it does not exist. We can assure our readers that in this very town there are dozens of homes in which the clothing of children represents not merely a difficulty but a major problem. We even make so bold as to state that unless better facilities, either by special family allocation, or subsidy are forthcoming that we will see a reintroduction of those 'clothes drives' and 'Benevolent Societies' relics of the bad old days when depression caused a drastic money shortage and which to-day seems a likely parallel to a war which has caused a drastic goods shortage. Strangely enough the result bids fair to become almost identical when carried to extremes.