The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1919 THE NATURAL ENEMY.

Taihape Daily Times, 16 January 1919, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1919 THE NATURAL ENEMY.

(With -which is Incorporated The TaS* hspe Pont cad WaXnmil-'io News).

The question of prices of all necessaries of life was discussed in a recent issue of this journal; since then manufacturers, importers and other interested New Zealand, traders, as well as those others who arc said to be amongst this country’s leading merchants, in all parts of the Dominion, have, by interviews with Reporters, managed to secure some very lengthy and valuable advertisements on the presumption of what they had to say was of extreme public interest. It will be noticed by everyone but the uusonhisticatcd, in such matters that everyone of theso published interviews arc pervaded and tinctured with the thought expressed being fathered by the wish of its author. We have woollen people telling newspapers in all seriousness that woollen prices cannot come down, that, in fact, they arc much more likely to go higher owing to the demand for

raw materials; the leiathcrmen are hustling the reporter with their story about boots being irretrievably on the rise in price, and goodness only knows, when they can be made any cheaper; shortness of material and high prices are the chief factors. Coal will be dearer because, although there are millions of tons in the earth, men cannot be got to get it out; the workers in the mines arc oblivious to the hardships suffered by wives and children throughout the country so long as they can do as little work as possible for enough money to keep them in semi-luxury, at least, that is the aspect the mine-owners have put upon the matter. There is not a line of imported merchandise of household demand that has not been talked about by interested people to newspaper men. What is all their anxiety about? Why are they rushing the newspapers to tell people there is going to be no lessening of the cost of living, but, owing to there being no war the demand is going to make prices still higher? Is it because they have had such a glorious time at profiteering that they ’ are now in mortal fear lest the ending of the war is to be the commencement of a reversion to possible conditions for the masses? Everyman in the street has had it hammered into him by these interested people that living will never be. sc cheap as it wias before the war. and yet for twenty years before the war the British Government was spending large sums of money in consideration of the cost of living question. Living was then so costly that tens of thousands of people were dying of starvation annually, and when the war broke out the nation was on the verge of bankruptcy in manhood. What -would be the economic fate of the world if merchants and manufacturers were to control it? It is obvious from their attitude to economic conditions, the greatest war ever contemplated could not. commence to compare 'with the misery, suffering 'Mid dcaVk that would result. This is the time to speak as well as to think; while the blackest clouds of industrial trouble threaten to break over the people’s heads it is not the time to allow profiteering to go on baiting maddened, exasperated workers. Despite the fact that middlemen have •successfully cozened and cajoled producers into being foolish enough to help them in their unrighteous extortion, by making them believe that the higher the prices they got from the consumer the higher the prices they could pay them. We have always contended, and our opinion has now become unshakeable, that producers and workers tare natural born friends; that they are not the natural enemies inteiestod middlemen have subtly made them out to be. If there were no other evidence in support *-'^ s fact the present attitude of middlemen should be ample to convince the' greatest doubter. Will producers notice that while middlemen are (interviewing reporters and having it publicly proclaimed that prices of all commodities arc likely to go higher, they are at the same time tolling producers that prices of their products must go down and that they have already shunted them upon the down-grade? Boots, harness and leather goods will be higher, but the hides and pelfs from which they arc made are to bo lower; everything required in the home such as clothing made of wool is going on increasing in price while

the value of the producers’ sheep from which it conies is on a sharp decline; At present the producer sells his wool at cighioenpencc and buys it back at ten shillings. In some articles he pays as much per __ ounce in the form of material as ho got per pound for the pure wool. By no logical and just reasoning can we synchronise the precept with the practice of traders; to the producer from whom they acquire their goods they say prices must be reduced, and they reduce them; to the consumer, the worker, to whom they sell, they proclaim 'through newspapers jthaH? prices must increase anu~tliey increase them. Is there not in this fact all the evidence one could “possibly want that whatever the trader may by chicanery and subtlety make the producer and the worker believe to the contrary, both arc the subjects, the victims for his exploitations? Will producers not realise that absurdly fictitious values being given to enable profiteering has made the growng of the very staff of life an unprofitable business and will not producers realise that it is only a matter of time when the same interest would reduce meat and wool growing to a similar disastrous level? Wo press upon producers the urgency of looking more deeply into their own business, not only on their own farm, but that they should follow their product with a keen business instincttill it reaches the consumer. In a reply to a deputation of two hundred British manufacturers Mr Bonar Law said: “one of the greatest lessons of the war was the necessity to produce where posible, ’ ’ and he urged upon them that there must be stability in the Home markets. Mr Bonar Law gave these two hundred traders and manufacturers to understand that production must be increased, but it could not be increased unless they would abandon their combinings and cornerings and establish an uniform stability in markets. Who null strain every effort to produce -wheat with the knowledge that . he may become the victim f 6f. some corner, and while sheepfarmers have strained to produce and have generously forgone profits, which profiteers'have stepped in and filched, and have agreed to sell to the Imperial Government at a fixed price during the war, how many of them will trust with any comfortable feelings the markets when relinquishment of Government control have left them to the mercy of a class that has got their lamb at sixpence and sold it as high as half a crown, and who have bought their wool at eightcohpence and sold it back to them at ten shillings? Systems of legalised robbery must, and will, go.