SALES OF CLOTH

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 101, 22 January 1921, Page 6

SALES OF CLOTH

PROFITEERING ALLEGED TWO DUNEDIN CASES By Telegraph—Press Association. Dunedin, January 21. Charges of alleged profiteering were heard by Air. J. R. Bartholomew, S.M., in the City Police Court to-day;, when Douglas Bernstein was charged with selling to the D.I.C. 105 yards of costume cloth at an unreasonably high price. The D.I.C. was charged with selling one yard of the cloth to a customer at too high a price. The Crown Prosecutor (Air. A. S. Adams) prosecuted. Air. JL. Sinclair appeared for Bernstein, and Air. J. B. Callan for the other defendant Bernstein bought the cloth from the Brude Woollen Mills at 7s. and sold it for 12s. Gd. to the D.1.C., returning an actual profit of 67.28 per cent, on cost. The D.I.C. sold at 215., making a profit, allowing for discount, of 70.8 per cent. The defence in Bernstein’s case was that the defendant raised the price of the Bruce cloth when he found that an English substitute for the balance of the order would cost him 10s. 3d.- Counsel contended that his client was perfectly entitled to base his charges on replacement values, as had been established by the Appeal Court in Hie alarm clock cases. In the D.I.C. case, counsel explained that the price had been fixed by the departmental head, of whose policy the house did not approve. Counsel also mentioned the sections of the Act providing that in the case of an investigation, information so. solicited should lie confidential, and that in the case of a judicial inquiry traders should lx? indemnified against prosecution, but stateel that his clients considered it would not be consistent to attempt to block the prosecution from using the information they had 'readily given. The Magistrate reserved his decision.