The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons. Motto: Public service. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1920. BREAD AND GAMES.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 575, 15 October 1920, Page 2

The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons. Motto: Public service. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1920. BREAD AND GAMES.

The most casual student of history is conversant with the policy known as "bread and games,' which popular allusion is based on the opportunism of a Roman emperor who, when the populace clamoured lor better conditions, gave them bread and games gratis, just to keep them quiet and incidentally save his head. The rabble did not immediately sense the very obvious fact that they had to pay indirectly for the bread and games, but inevitably the system crumbled on account of its inherent rottenness and the glory of Imperial Rome melted away. In New Zealand we appear to be following a similarly vicious course, but instead of the straight-out giving of bread and games we pay subsidies from the Consolidated Fund and indirectly tax the community for the purpose of recovering these subsidies, plus the amount paid to officials for the collection of the same. The practical effect is that, in the case of butter prices, the public will pay 2s od instead of 2s lid; the same public will have to refund the extra bd in the form of indirect taxation, plus a percentage for collecting and disuniting tne subsidy, and another percentage for imposing and collectmi; the taxes necessary to recoup me blaic for the payment of the subsidy. I'iie public will get butter Kir lis <kl, but it vviil have to pay ilie deducted Sd back, plus something iur incidental expenses, making the community worse oil' tnan it was before. And so the illogical and vicious .justness goes on. Hut under the circumstances the Government may have acted wisely; the general public cannot be expected to understand the whole ol' the complicated issues to ne solved in coming to a decision on a matter of this nature. It may be that prices are going to fall, in which event it would not be a dil•licutt matter to drop the subsidy and put butter on an equality with other produce on the market. Already several manufacturing firms in Great Britain have closed clown on account ol' the successive increases in wages strangling their business, and some well-informed people predict a slump in prices, which is bound to rft'eci New Zealand to some extent. But we cannot hold with the "New Zealand Herald's" reasoning that there is a parallel between the enforced education of butter-prices locally and that for timber for butter boxes. 1J butter rose too high for the people of moderate means to purchase they would have to do with very littie and use some of the well-known substitutes until the economic position became stabilised and prices were back to normal. But in regard to buttei boxes, if the timber for these was not available and no satisfactory substitutes were found our export trade would be paralysed and the country plunged into ruin. There is no analogy here. Events in the future may justify the present unsatisfactory arrangement, which is a negation of the economic laws of supply and demand. But we trust that the last has been heard of subsidies, and that the natural laws of economy will be allowed to operate in regard to primary produce, and we want no more of the reasoning that places timber, which takes a quarter of a century or more to grow to maturity, on a par with cultivated products taking at most a year only to increase or decrease the supply of.