SALE OF BOOTS.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17112, 6 April 1921, Page 7

SALE OF BOOTS.

ALLEGED PROFITEERING.

(press association telegram.) * AUCKLAND, April 6. Further evidence for the defence in the case in which Ernest E. Leaning, bootmaker, Queen street, is charged with having sold a pair of boots at a price considered unreasonably high, namely, £4 19s 6d, was heard before Mr E. C. Cutten, S.M., in the Magistrate's Court to-day. Herbert Dearsley, boot manufacturer of twenty-live years' standing, in Auckland, said he would class defendant as ahigh-class surgical expert. There was no basis of comparison between the cost of boots made by defendant and those made in a faotory. Witness could not assess the cost of the boots made by defendant, because systems of manufacture were so different.

Duncan John Campbell,. bootmaker, of Vulcan lane, said he had been in business about thirty years. He.manufactured boots on the factory > principle, but in the hand-sewn style. Defendant made boots on the "knee" style, which was slow and costly as compared with factory methods. Witness had been making special boots for the Defence Department by taking the soldiers' measurements, fitting the last, and ordering parts of tho boots to be made in other factories. The flat rate for these boots was £4 4s. His system was quicker than that employed by defendant, and approached the factory system.

After further evidence "the case was adjourned.