“PROVOKED ILL-WILL”

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12617, 30 November 1926, Page 7

“PROVOKED ILL-WILL”

DAIRY IMPORTERS DENOUNCE PRICE-FIXING POLICY "FOLLOWING LENIN’S EXAMPLES" BUYERS WILL “LOOK AT” OUR PRODUCE UNTIL PRICE SUITS THEM A whole-heatted denunclatiion of the New Zealand Dairy Control Board's policy was a feature of the annual dinner of the Whole- ✓ sale Produce Merchants’ Association in London.

(Special to the “Times.”) AUCKLAND, November 27. Private information of special interest to the protagonists in the dairy control controversy has just been received in Auckland. The annual dinner of the "Wholesale Produce Merchants’ Association (London) was held quite recently. The function was reported in detail in “The Grocer,” one of the foremost trade journals in the United Kingdom. Follow some pertinent points from the report, as given to a “Times” correspondent. The chairman of the association said that the Dairy Control Board was attempting to foist upon the Old Country conditions of business which, in his judgment, would never be tolerated, and undoubtedly had provoked the ill-will of all the distributors. He thought it would he impossible to do justice to dairies across the water in face of the whole-hearted opposition of the distributors. Apparently those who engineered the scheme had overlooked Australian, Continental, and other dairy produce. The association was unanimous in its condemnation of the board’s policy; be knew none who bad a good word for it. In responding to the toast, the chairman of the New Zealand Dairy Importers’ Association, who is also a member of the price-fixing committee, expressed the opinion that in “following Lenin’s example” New Zealand had made a sad mistake. The board

should return to a natural market, otherwise buyers would simply look at New Zealand butter and cheese until it had multiplied, and, when the price was sufficiently attractive, take what they wanted. On a natural market buyers took goods from week to week. With a natural market, prices (he added) would have been very different today, as the trade could use it brains, judgment, and experience, whereas now traders were merely shopkeepers handing cut a standard article at fixed price. Control (he continued) had not been launched in accordance with promises given by delegates two years ago. There was supposed to be equality of treatment, but they knew only too well that that condition did not exist. The importers made a mistake in agreeing to present conditions before seeing that every section of the trade was safeguarded. Under the control scheme, with the preference given to some firms, the wholesalers stood no chance. The speaker concluded by appealing to the Control Board, several of whose members were present, to put the trade on a sound basis by deleting pricefixing. No matter how good an article might be, if the trade and the public were resentful, it would never fetch its proper economic value. According to the same source of information, important developments bearing on control are possible before Christmas.