PROFITEERING IN JAPAN.

Otaki Mail, Volume XXVIII, 26 April 1920, Page 4

PROFITEERING IN JAPAN.

The House of Peers iu Japan (according to the "Japan Weekly Chronicle") is disturbing itself seriously on the much and widely-discussed question of prices. All parties have agrc:-l to warn the Government regarding the necessity tor taking prompt and i-fferme measures lor the regulation of the exorbitant prices now ruling. The peers take the line 'that the abnormal rise in prices has brought about a sense of great insecurity of living in the popular mind, and this stato of affairs cannot fail to have a dcmorsiisiiig effect upon the ideas of the nation. . . . This is a very

I serious question, affecting the capitalists, labourers, and salaried people alike. If the present situation is not •meliorated by the Government, the ■ Hate will soon be beset by grave difficulties." Another article in the same paper deals with "the pure artificiality j of the present rise in the Japanese rice market." It speaks with intense indignation of the action of some big I merchants who arc not only combining to g"t an extortionate price, with huge profits in its traiu, but are adulterating "the good rice with inferior stuff, so that "the public is forced to eat rice disgustingly deteriorated in quality." £After a word of sympathy tor smaller 9 merchants and' sellers, who are being 'ruined, the "Chronicle" quotes as folloWg: _<<jt is to be fervently desired (our contemporary piously concludes) that an iron hammer will fall upon the heads of these unscrupulously wicked