LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 22, 20 October 1917, Page 11

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

THE COST OF LIVING

. Sir,—A point which scorns to have been .overlooked aliko by tho Cost of Living Commission and by yourself in your strictures upon tho conclusions arrived at oy that board, is that tho kernel of iho (whole matter is that thero should have been no war profits at all under an cquitsblo system of control of food supplies, iiou, sir, alike with Iho Commissioners, seom-'to consider the right of tho producers to obtain tho highest price possible under war conditions unchallenglable, and tho only issue between you and iho Commissioners is the modus opcrsindi. Yet, surely, if it is right to cod. script' labour—to take tlio farmer from his plough, tho clerk from his desk, the only sou from the widowed mother he is supporting—it is right to conscript wealth (representing not merely ante-war, but prewar.values. Yet tho Hon. the Attorneygeneral describes the man who would inake this .suggestion us "only fit for Ponnia,' and tho very Commissioners appointed to inquire into the cost of living seem to havo carefully missed tho' point in their conclusions, namely, that the high cost of living is caused "by tho unrestricted . exploitation of the public ■by the producers and shipping companies mud tho merchants. Had tho Government said to these people in the first instance: "Gentlemen, you aro entitled to such prices as you wero getting before the war, and no more"; had they in cfIccfc commandeered produco and transport, and allowed fair pro-war values, the cost: of living could never have approached its present figure. To haggle over tho method by which tho exploiters aro to liavo mado good to them the utmost that can bo wrung from the pubJic by reason of its needs', only shows the perhaps wilful blindness of the authorises to the real problem and its merits. —I am, etc., X. Agaio, October IS, 1917. .