The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, MAY 20, 1918. WHO SCOOPS THE PROFITS?

Taihape Daily Times, 20 May 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, MAY 20, 1918. WHO SCOOPS THE PROFITS?

(With which is Incorporated The Taihape Poet and WaXnmciao News)..

Despite the repeated denials that profiteering has anything to do with, the high cost of the necessaries of life, we see that co-operative buying and cooperative selling is extending rapidly throughout Australasia. Bodies of retailers have formed wholesale co-oper-ative companies; farmers have found it imperative to initiate and establish their own purchasing, and also their own distributing institutions to avoid threatened and actual exploitation. The co-operation crop is thriving amazingly, not only in New Zealand, but also in the various States of the

Australian Commonwealth. The New Zealand Prime Minister has distributed his statement on the Cost of Living broadcast; he has had it printed in pamphlet form and posted everywhere of any consequence. It bolsters up the profiteer; it says the Government made every endeavour to keep down the cost of living, and still the growth of co-operative purchasing institutions is flourishing as it never flourished before. If there is no profiteering; if there are no exorbitant middle profits to cut out what is the co-operation for?-Mr. Massey says "every endeavour" was made by the Government in conjunction' with Board of Trade, he does not mean that honest efforts were exhaustively made to keep down urices. The Government and the Board of Trade are satisfied that no advantage has been taken of the consuming public. We are asked by the Premier to particularly note that the prices of fifty-seVen main commodities dealt with by wholesale grocery —merchants are now controlled by the Board. It is the selling prices he refers to as in 'the next sentence he says the import prices cannot be controlled. If fiftyseven main commodities are controlled why is not the selling price to consumers in the various centres somewhat similar? Mr Massey's main effort was to protect the big merchant and throw all blame upon- retailers. Take whichever controlled commodity one will that is sold by grocers, and he will find an amazing variation in prices charged in different centres. Eaisins are sevenpencc a pound in one town and tenpenco in another — only threepence in a pound, additional profit got by somebody. Coffee is eighteenpence in one inland centre, while in seaports where it is landed, the public are compelled to pay twenty three pence or go without —five pcnc<? on a pound of coffee! It seems that in those places where merchants unload their commodities and load them on to retailers with the minimum of expense, the higher retail prices are. We could go on quoting almost every article in the grocery store showing just similar difference in selling prices. Sago is 5Jd in one place and 4J in another; rice 2id as against 4id; condensed milk in Wellington is 14d while in many inland towns and in some other seaports it is only Bd. Is any other evidence required to prove that profiteering is rampant in its most dishonest, contemptible and degrading forms? In some towns, including Palmcrston, condensed milk is only 7fd, only a trifle more than half the price it is sold at in Wellington, and yet that milk, in all probability, comes through Wellington merchants. We say it is an insult for Mr. Massey, or anybody else, to tell the people of this country there is no profiteering. Grocery commodities arc taken because Mr Massey specially asked the people and their Representatives in Parliament, to note that prices of fifty-seven main commodities were controlled by the Board of Trade. The meshes of the control net are surely disastrously largo to let two tins of condensed milk slip through in Palmcrston for just about the same money that only one gets through for in Wellington. We have said Mr. Massey's speech tended, perhaps unwitttagh, to throw the onus and odium

of profiteering prices on retailors. The wholesalers have «.' vo*ytajlose corporation; they confer and fix prices of the goods they distribute, and yet in Wellington where milk is only handed out of their stocks ■to retailers it is sold at double the price to the consumer that is charged for it in Palmerston and other places where it has to be railed for a hundred miles or thereabout. If Mr. Massey asks us to believe that retailers rob their customers to such a criminal. extent, he over-es-timates our credulity. Not long ago Taihape could boast of having the low- ' est priced groceries -in New Zealand, but within only one year it has become ; the fourth dearest. It is even clearer than Wellington, and' if Mr. Massey and the Board are right in their contentions that wholesalers are selling at uniform controlled prices, then they are telling our shop-keeper that they are the robbers of the people. We know it is nothing of the kind; in places where prices are so low that they proclaim robbery, where half as ■ much again is charged, the wholesale combine does a little regulating, and ; the next order the retailer gives is \ on an entirely different quotation, and he must take the goods or leave them. It is money and not flesh and blood ' that rules, and while profiteers and their jackals make the laws, the people will continue to suffer. In Australia retailer.? arc rushing into co-operation, and are forming wholesale co-opera-tive federations. They can effectively 'co-operate because they have not to contend with Shipping Combines that double their capital in one year's operations; they have a State shipping lino to rescue them from the clutches of the marine profiteering octopi, while New Zealanders arc kept well I within the reach and at tho mercy of their Wood-sucking tentacles. Wo have no intention to critically go through Mr Massey's.long harangue in defence of wholesalers. The Government has done excellent service in the matter of sugar prices, that is so far as wo can judge, and we ungrudgingly give the credit that is due. Mr. Massey blames tho high cost of imported commodities to increases in freights, which he shows are about £1 13s per hundredweight between New Zealand 'and England; but we suggest' that frieghts have no relation to the differential prices charged after the goods arrive in New' Zealand. The Government allowed bacon to be bought up and exported to South America; this operation of trusts was stopped, but the mischief was done and bacon has remained [at prohibitive prices ever since. When the Premier talks about tho influence moriey has had on rising prices he gets out of his depth and we , cannot follow him. In one branch he f says the supply of money' has outstripi ped the volume of trade, in the next j hf; says rising:;prices are influenced by appreciation of- the currency that has taken place. We would respectfully suggest that Mr.' Massey.is taking shelter on both sides of the economic hedge at once. If there is. more money than commodities the latter will undoubtedly increase in price, but if the currency appreciates the reverse must happen—that is. of course, if the laws of supply and demand are not interfered with by corners, combines, trusts and syndicates. We are inclined to view Mr. Massey's pamphlet to explain away profiteering as rather an ill-advised effort.