MUNICIPAL TRADING

Hokitika Guardian, 19 October 1929, Page 8

MUNICIPAL TRADING

deluded Councillors. ■ WHAT EXPERIENCE TEACHES. (Nineteen Twenty-Eight Committee.) No impartial person who has watched at all closely the influence, organised Labour has exercised upon tho municipal institutions of the Uohiinion will deny that in many respects it lias made for the advantage of the whole community. The direct representation of Labour upon city and borough councils and upon hospital, charitable aid and education boards has given to these bodies a breadth of vision and a depth of understanding which was sometimes lacking before the expansion of their franchise. It has to be admitted, however, that there are occasions on which the representatives of Labour are disposed to take rather the narrow than the broad view of' some question submitted to them. A striking instance of this kind of delusion was furnished at the last meeting of the Wellington City Council. The general manager of the Tramway and Electric Lighting Department sought permission to make arrangements for holding an electrical exhibition in the Town Hall next month, his purpose being to display the advantages of the latest developments in electric lighting, cooking, and heating apparatus and so increase the demand for current to the substantial profit of the Council. “ OUST THE PRIVATE TRADER.” The display was to cost the City Council £7B—probably to be reduced to £39 by a proportion of the profits b‘eing returned to the Electric Lighting Department—and the exhibitors of the cooking and heating apparatus were each to pay £46 for a stall. The idea behind the whole scheme was, of course, that while the exhibitors displayed the merits of their goods, the Council would reap a substantial advantage from an increase in .the demand for current. Such a co-operative effort seemed to be in every way desirable. But the Labour members of the Council, who happened also to be members of the House of Representatives— Mr C. H. Chapman,; Mr R. McKeen, and Mr R.. Semple—roundly condemned the whole scheme. Mr Chapman had no objection to .'the private traders providing such an exhibition, but he protested against the Council bearing any part of the cost. It should set up a goods department. Mr McKeen was of the same mind. “ Let us do as the power boards do,” he said, “ and sell the goods.” Mr Semple objected to the Council “boosting private enterprise.” He, too, wanted to oust the private trader at the cost of many thousands of pounds. FACTS ABOUT THE MATTER.

That these three gentlemen are perfectly sincere in their attachment to municipal trading need not be questioned. But the whole array of practical experience is against their assumptions 'and contentions. They have not produced on© single instance in which State or municipal trading has proved itself to be more beneficial to the public at large than is well-ordered private trading. On the contrary, the failures of State and •municipal trading are being recorded on every hand. Just the other day it was officially announced that the Government’s excursion into the bus business had resulted in a loss of many thousands of pounds. Similar confessions have been made concerning shipbuilding, cargo carrying, saw-milling; house building, stock raising, fruit growing, and a score of similar undertakings. From Queensland we have an admission by the last Premier of the long-lived Labour Government that the disaster which ulitmately overtook him and his colleagues was due to the failure of the people themselves to rise to the hagy ideals of Socialism. “We gave them good wages and good conditions,” says Mr McCormack, “ and we expected good service in return. But we did not get it, and one after another we were compelled to close our industries down.” Surely the pathos of this should set the three Labour members of the Wellington City Council thinking of the responsibilities that beset them. Needless to say, the scheme for the electrical exhibition was endorsed by the Council by twelve votes to three.