SHOPKEEPER AND CUSTOMER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 164, 10 January 1912, Page 4

SHOPKEEPER AND CUSTOMER.

At spasmodic'intervals the authorities become virtuous in the matter of the people's food and gather in a few dealers, lining them for selling impure articles, or short-weight bread,, and so forth. It may be taken as a general indication that the authorities will cease to bother tradesmen \vhsn they have passed, the yearly or biennial. or triennial batch through the courts. Al) these attacks of virtue are spasmodic, and have but the' palest effect in stopping, the evils intended .to be suppressed., In this connection it is interesting to note that a number of city bakers have been fined for selling short-weight bread. This, of course is a "very common sin against the public, and is, most probably, rather a sin of carelessness than of deliberate intention. But the* most interesting point in the Court procedure was when one of the defendants said' he did not think it a "fair deal" for the authorities 'to select underweight'loaves on which to base action, when the whole batch if taken in the bulk might be up to weigh't. ' We do not know whether the average tradesman who supplies edibles would support 'this contention that it was ■a fair deal to give A a' fourteen-ounce loaf if 13 got an eighteen-ounee. one, or ,tliat it wais quite right to forget to give C <a full pound of sugar as long as D got a" fait deal or a little over-weight. In every case where the buyer is giyien ah underweight article, the buyer is 'himself ito blame. •In most countries absolute necessities are weighed before the eyes of a customer.. In Ne\tf Zealand the customed is absolutely at the mercy of the purveyor of meat, milk, bread, coal, and many Other necessaries. The haphazard methods common throughout -New Zea-}a,nd-could only be tolerated by a community quite careless of its cash and trustful, to .the point, of,foolishness. There is no real system in NeW Zealand whereby full weight and good quality are matters of insistence between authority aftd purveyor. The inference is not that tradesmen are dishonest—for as a matter of fact New Zealand traders as a* elass ire as honest as the best of them but that the su'pineness of the authorities arid the "fdon't-care-a-hang" of the customer induces a carelessness that is costly to the people. .