The Daily News. TUESDAY, APRIL 5. "BAD MARKS" AND GOOD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 355, 5 April 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, APRIL 5. "BAD MARKS" AND GOOD.

The prosperity of this country cannot ] always be gauged by the amount of loan j money we are spending, the price our produce is bringing in the London markets, or the apparent spending capacity of the ordinary individual. The man in the street may be exceedingly well dressed, he may live in a good house, feed himself well, and have money to spend oil the races without in the least being really and truly prosperous. The true gauge is, not a man's outward and visible alleged possessions, but his receipt file. We complain sometimes in New Zealand that industries that do not exist are protected to such an extent that 'we have to pay exorbitant prices for commodities. This is not such a domestic catastrophe as the fact that the "'good mark" in New Zealand, as well as elsewhere, has to pay for the money the tradesman loses on the "bad mark." Tradesmen who supply the daily wants of the people may be.blamed for giving credit to their customers, but the fact remains that the people have become so habituated to the credit system that tradesmen must fall in line or go under. Many people, who apparently ibelieve they have a right to be clothed and fed by tradesmen, manage to thrive dishonestly for many years; and the fact that one cannot "get blood out of a stone" is a reason why so many debt cases in tlie Magistrate's Courts fail, and that judgment summonses are sometimes not worth the paper they are written on, There are so many ways that the lisihonest may use to avoid their responsibilities that some day it will be necessary to curtail the credit system. One of the commonest means of theft is by assignment of property to a nominee, so that when a dishonest person desires to avoid responsibility he may become bankrupt without any estate to divide among the creditors. Many a prosperous man in this country, as in other countries, owes'his •■start" in life to a dishonest bankruptcy. rJI course, in the matter of daily needs and the credit system tradesmen may be to blame, for many tradesmen really encourage it. To what extent it obtains is shown by a recent table, the result of investigations by the Invercargill News. It is set out in this table that bakers who have adopted the coupon cash system have no bad debts in the town. The bread business is not a fair test, as the commodity is the most important of all. The table shows the enormous percentage of bad debts in the books of other tradesmen and professional men. For instance, chemists and tailors are said to have the enormous percentage of 45 per cent, of bad debts on their books and doctors 40. Can it be wondered that medical service is dear to the person who needs it, that drugs are expensive, or that clothes appear to bf a prohibitive price to the man of small means who intends to pay cash down! It does not matter to the man who does not pay whether a suit of clothes costs £5 10s or twopence; and if the debtor is one of the young irrespon■i'oles with nothing in his pocket and no intention of having anything, summonses or judgment summonses or even gaol will not pay the tradesman cash. In innumerable cases tradesmen do not sue because they "will not throw gopd money after bad." If the credit system were abolished many people in New Zealand would revert to the sturdy independence and thriftiness of their immediate forefathers. We noire that in the lists published no mention is made of a class of people who suffer exceedingly—the In New Zealand a very large proportion of young men—and old men, for that matter—live in boarding-houses. Many women keep boarding-houses because they are widowed, and have therefore to depend on their own resources for a living; and yet there is no class that suffers more from tl>e criminal ''bad mark" than the people who house and fepd bachelors. This evil is more pronounced because the people in this country are largely nonmdic. Almost every clagi of worker is '"here to-day and gone to-morrow," and he frequently leaves his boarding-house without discharging his liability, A large class of wandering men open!}' boast of their imartness in this regard. The extent of the credit system is an evidence of the looseness of commercial morality and a reflection on the honor of the people who do not pay. There is no remedy except by the united effort of all trades. If it 'were enacted that no person could legally receive goods of any kind without paying cash for them, prices for commodities would be immediately reduced as a consequence. The man who does not pay is the enemy of the man who does. If the cash buyer opened a campaign against the "bad mark," the 'bad rnarll would disappear or go hungry. And he deserves to go hungry.