COST OF LIVING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 90, 2 September 1912, Page 5

COST OF LIVING.

1 TIIE COMMISSION'S RETORT. SHODDY BOOTS. THE GOVERNMENTS PROPOSALS. By Telegraph—Press Association. Christchurch, Saturday. At an interview this morning, Mr. F. M. 15. Fisher said that there was no question that the report of the Cost of Living Commission was of considerable value to the Government. The Masscy Government was alive to the necessity of some of the reforms recommended by the Commission. For instance, the recommendation affecting imported and locally-made boots, shoes and slippers was very valuable. Mr. Fisher said that he had a Bill in course of preparation, which lie hoped shortly to introduce and put through the, House this session, which would deal effectively with that class of goods, either imported to the Dominion or made here and sold as being the genuine article. The Government did not propose to take measures to prevent the public purchasing composition cardboard boots, if they wanted to. The Government was certainly going to stop goods of that description being sold to the public as being leather all through. It was not the business of any one individual to raise very strong objection to buying shoddy boots. It was certainly the business of the State to protect citizens being imposed upon by the sale of adulterated or shoddy goods. He hoped, as time went on, the public would realise that the new Government was determined that this species of commercial fraud should be stamped out. The report, said Mr. Fisher, would probably come as a shock to many of those out-and-out protectionists, who believed in the development of what they' called hot-house industries. A very essential point in connection with the Commission's report was that such recommendations should have come from a Commission upon which Labor was strongly represented. The problem, continued Mr. Fisher, was to maintain a sufficiently high protective tariff for New Zealand to enable her own people to buy her own goods at a reasonable price, without having recourse to products of European countries made by sweated labor, which was the rule and not the exception. The very object he had in mind last week, in appointing Mr. Spence Collector of Customs at Invercargill, to go Home to England and' represent the Customs Department, was to prevent the importa- ' tion to New 'Zealand of goods made on the Continent by sweated labor, shipped to England, and exported to New Zealand as being goods of British manufacture, thus escaping the preferential tarill'. Mr. Fisher added that the nature of the Commission's report showed the wisdom of the Government withholding the tariff proposals this session. The evidence taken before the Commission would be thoroughly digested before anything was done.

NEW ZEALAND MERCHANTS' ASSOCIATION. THE COMMISSION IMPEACHED. Wellington, Last Niglit, Mr. Harold Beauchamp, president of the New Zealand Merchants' Association, interviewed concerning the report of the Cost of Living Commission, was asked why !liis Association refused to give evidence. "We declined," he said, "to recognise the Commission as a tribunal capable of giving fair, unbiased and impartial consideration to the evidence submitted to them by members of the New Zealand Merchants' Association. It was. in our opinion, useless to submit our evidence to a tribunal which was not expected to give it fair consideration. Mr. Fairbairn, one of the members of the Commission, has, we contend, been in avowed hostility to the Association. We allege that Mr. Fairbairn possessed a strong bias against the Association and its members, and could not exercise that impartiality in considering and judging upon their evidence which the Association was entitled to expect, and without which the enquiry would have been useless and a farce. Furthermore, the Association considered that other members of the Commission had had 110 commercial training, or any particular knowledge of economics. The order of reference recognised that the subject was properly one of economics, and as such demanded that the Commission should be composed of men who had had wide commercial experience, and -who had some knowledge, at least elementary, of the principles of economics. The Commissioners were so manifestly lacking in these necessary qualifications that it was impossible that a conclusion arrived at by them would be of any value in determining the causes of the alleged increased cost of living, and what action, legislative or otherwise, should be taken to bring about a reduction of such cost." It was a significant fact, he added, that the retail grocers who had, in their evidence given before the Commission, complained of the -hardships inflicted upon the retail trade by the Merchants' Association, had, in almost every case, been customers of the firm of Fairbairn, Wright and Co., of which firm Mr. Fairbairn was a principal. It was also noticeable that Mr. Fairbairn led all the evidence adduced by these witnesses, and was, so far as the press reports showed, the only member of the Commission who questioned on his own account, and it must be plain to all reasonable men that the Merchants' Association and its members could not recognise the existing ■ Commission as a fair or impartial tribunal.' "They would," he said, "have stultified themselves by giving evidence •before the Commission and submitting their case to such a tribunal. The Merchants' Association and its members have nothing to conceal, and before an impartial and competent tribunal would have been prepared to give such evidence and information as was in their power relating to the prices of articles of food, etc., extending over a long period of years. It is clear that the further increase in the cost of living is due to the higher standard of living which has obtained in New Zealand, in common with the whole of the civilised world. I attribute the increased cost of living, in a few words, to: (I) The rates of wages of workers; (2) the shortening of the. hours of employment; (3) the diminished output of work, as compared with former years; (4) the extravagance characterising all classes of the community. With regard to the contribution of members of the Merchants' Association to the pay roll of New Zealand, it has been ascertained that members of it (and them only) employ 700 married men and 110:! single men, and pay for salaries and wages an annual sum amounting to £304,109."