RISING COSTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 137, 10 May 1940, Page 6

RISING COSTS.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Despite the fact that the settlement of industrial disputes is already provided for, the Minister of Labour has assumed dictatorial powers and taken upon himself the function of the Arbitration . Court, awarding Auckland tramwaymen an 8 per cent, bonus. Two facts are apparent:(1) This is only another instance or the steering of New Zealand’s ship of State towards totalitarianism. (2) If wages are to be thus raised in one instance there will soon be an all round demand for the same thing. The result will be a further rise m costs, requiring a further rise in wages —and so on. The rising costs (which the Government has so repeatedly assured us will not be allowed in this war) will be mainly borne by the farmer who cannot pass them on, even if his patriotism would permit him to do so. The result, with farms already deoleted of labour, . will be a further fall in production just when the need of the Empire is so great. It resolves itself into a vicious circle as described by Carleton Beals. “It all boils down,” he says, “to our paying more to produce less, to pay still more, in order that fewer of us can pay more to produce less.”- — I am, etc., LOGIC.