DAY OF SMALL MAN DONE!

Evening Star, Issue 22463, 7 October 1936, Page 7

DAY OF SMALL MAN DONE!

ORGANISING RINGS AND COMBINES INDEPENDENT’S VIEW OF EFFICIENCY BILL [From Our Parliamentary Reporter.] WELLINGTON, October 6. Quoting notable examples of savings through the official regulation of road transport, Mr Christie (W'aipawa) employed these illustrations as arguments for the proper organisation of industry, hut Mr Wright (Wellington Suburbs Independent) put before the House tonight an entirely different view of the Industrial Efficiency Bill. He aroused instant interruption when he opened with the declaration that it was proposing to organise rings and combines to keep up prices, and he wondered what the Minister of Lands would say after he had made the welkin ring with his condemnation of these evils. The philosophy of the Liberals, he reminded Government members, was always for liberty to buy in the cheapest market and sell wherever one pleased. Mr Sullivan: Your colleagues say we are going to create a Soviet, not a Capitalistic combine. Mr Wright; The Minister is not correct in calling them my colleagues. He is _ doing the Opposition a very grave injustice. (Laughter.) Mr Wright added that if the measure worked at all it would force manufacturers into a sort of combine against the general public under the guise *:f nationalisation and efficiency, but with all their reduced costs there was nothing to prevent these people charging the same prices and exploiting the public, and if there was any attempt to control prices grave difficulty would be encountered by the Industries Bureau. It was an attempt to control secondary production, and the only way this could be done was the way they followed in Russia. Mr Semple; Would you infer that creating a private combine is Socialism? Mr Wright replied that although the Bill set out to_ bring every individual into the combination, the individual character of the firms was still there. Edward Bellamy had said that in future rings and combines would control all industry and finally they would be narrowed down to a few, and the State would step in and take the lot. This Bill was working to that end. No small man could start a business. Henry Ford would have been barred because on the Bureau Committee would be two men in the industry concerned, and when a new man wanted to start they would suggest that he had no capital, that there was no room for him, or that he was inefficient. The day of the small man was gone. He was down and out, emphatically concluded the Independent member.