PRICE OF CLOTH.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 January 1921, Page 5

PRICE OF CLOTH.

PROFITEERING CHARGES. D.I.C. IN COURT. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Dunedin, Last Night. Charges of profiteering were heard by Mr. J. R. Bartholomew, S.M., in the City Police Court to-day, when Douglas Bernstein was charged with selling to the D.I.C. 105 yards of costume cloth at an unreasonably high price. The D.I.C. was charged with selling one yard of cloth to a customer at too high a price. The Crown Prosecutor (Mr. A. S. Adams) prosecuted, and his case wa? that Bernstein bought the cloth from the Bruce Woollen Mills at 7s, and sold it for 12s fid to the D.1.C., returning an actual profit of 67.28 per cent, on the cost. The D.I.C. sold it at 21s, making a profit, allowing for discount, of 70.8 per cent. The defence in Bernstein’s case, was that the defendant raised the price of the Bruce cloth when he found that an English substitute for the balance of the order would cost him 10s 3d. Counsel contended that his client was perfectly entitled to base his charges on replacement values, as had been established by the Appeal Court in the alarm clock cases. In the D.I.C. case, counsel explained that the price had been fixed by a departmental Jfiead, of whose policy the house did not approve. Counsel’ also mentioned sections of the Act providing that in the case of an investigation information so solicited should be confidential, and that in the case of a' judicial inquiry traders should be indemnified against prosecution, but he stated that his clients considered it would not be consistent to attempt to block the prosecution from using the information they had readily given. The magistrate reserved his' decision.