PRESENT-DAY EVILS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3517, 1 July 1920, Page 4

PRESENT-DAY EVILS.

MAGISTRATE SPEAKS OUT. CAUSE OF HIGH PRICES. CHRISTCHURCH. June 29. An interesting commentary on the trend of the times was offered by Mr , S. E. McCarthy, S.M., in the Magis.- | Crate's Court tq-day when delivering Judgment in the profiteering cases j against several firms. The magistrate was dealing with an outline of the economic conditions leading up to the : passing of the Board of Trade Act, | 1919. | These conditons. he said, were a mat- 1

, ter of public history, of which the , J Courts would take judicial notice. The war had suddenly caused an apprcciaI tion of primary products. This in ! turn caused an appreciation of laud { values, especially of rural lands. These appreciations had their share in causI ing a general inflation of values. The I position was accentuated by the des- • truction of man and transmission pow- , er as well as of raw materials, owing 1 to the vicissitudes of war, and their 1 diversion from industries to warlike operations, by the general rise in the [ cost of transmission, by an adverse fall I in the rate of conversion owing to Great Britain becoming a debtor instead of a creditor nation, by a large proportion of workers engaging in strikes and a go-slow policy, which I latter might not inaptly bo defined as a species of militant inertia, the basic force of which was a malignant dis-

honesty. I In addition to all this, the considerable profits made out of land, commerce, and industry, and the high rate of wages prevailing, together with an inflated papier currency, had given momentum to an orgy of private extravagance, dominating sections of all classes. They had seen the "unthinking herd" engaging in a mad chase after sensory pleasures, while -the increased and increasing pi ices for literature had deprived well-nigh all but the well-to-do of those solid joys of which the changes and chance? of life could not rob their happy possessors. They had been producing less and consuming more. Prices had become so inflated that persons with moderate incomes found it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain their families and themselves and keep out of debt. Out of this welter there had emerged the unscrupulous trader bent on exploiting to the ritm.ost the necessities, the vices, and the follies of his fellow-citizens. The baleful activities of this clas g of Trade Avere assisting to waft, higher and higher the eversoaring prices. These remarks, the magistrate said, were of mere general application, and the Court was bound to say that the evidence adduced in the cases with which it was dealing would not justify the inclusion of any of the defendant firms in this category. These, however, were the economic conditions which led up to the passing of the statute, and it was in the light of these conditions that it must be interpreted.