The Daily News. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1912. A CURIOUS ATTITUDE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 91, 3 September 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1912. A CURIOUS ATTITUDE.

It ■ will be remembered that when the Cost of Living Commission was taking evidence, the New Zealand Merchants' Association, which is the largest trade organisation in the country, acting allegedly under legal advice, declined to give evidence when called upon. No reason was advanced for this undue modesty at the time, and the public was left to jump to the natural conclusion that the Association had something "up its sleeve," which it was desirous of keeping under lock and key. But the publication of the report of the Commission has succeeded in "drawing" the president of the Association, Mr. Harold Beauchamp. This gentleman has given a lame and labored explanation of the attitude of the Association, which will hold just about as much water as the average sieve. He impeaches the impartiality of the Commission because one of its members, who is himself a merchant in a large way of business, has previously shown pronounced hostility to the Association. We do not know Mr. Fairbaini, to whom exception is taken, from a bar of soap, but presumably the Government had some solid reas6n for including him. in the personnel, of the Commission, and it is a curiou.<, thing that the Merchants' Association, if it had a legitimate grievance, should not have objected to the appointment when it was made, instead of waiting to voice it.; dignified protest after the report of the Commission had been laid upon the table of the House. According (o Mr Beauchamp it was a significant fact 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 tlie press reports showed, the only member of the Commission who questioned on his own account. AVe should have thought that the very natural fact that Mr. Fairbairn led evidence along lines in which lie is presumably an expert should have redounded to his credit, and if he procured statements from the witnesses that are not in accordance with fact, the obvious remedy of the Association was to call rebutting evidence. According to Mr. Beauchamp, "the Merchants' Association and its members have nothing to conceal." but even the ordinary silly coot, at the street corner will, in these circumstances, be moved to ask: "If they have nothing to conceal, why conceal it';" The Association

knows perfectly well that Mr. Fair- ' bairn, whoever he may be, did not constitute the Commission, and it is little short of an impertinence to suggest that because this trade organisation had a suspicion of his impartiality it should cast a wholesale reflection upon all the members of the Commission. In effect, Mr. Beanchamp says that the Merchants' Association has got twopence and an old bone knife, but it is not going to show these valuable possessions it knows that Mr, Faivbaira does not believe that these assets are really in existence. The whole excuse is so palpably thin, and so obviously tired, that it is amazing to find it securing a hearing at all. If the Association is as far above suspicion as Caesar's wife, it had nothing to lose and everything to gain by flaunting the white flower of a blameless life in the public eye> "Before an impartial and competent tribunal," Mr. Beauchamp says, "the Association would have been prepared to give such evidence and information' as was in their power." Now, we want that evidence. The Commission was not a final Court of Appeal, for the Merchants' Association still has Parliament and the people behind it If it has anything to say upon the subject of the increased cost of living, now is the time to say it, but the fact that it has chosen to dodge cross-examination upon a fatuous and puerile excuse will not "cut much ice" with a public that has already grown suspicious of certain of its methods.