MUNICIPAL TRADING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 23 April 1913, Page 4

MUNICIPAL TRADING.

Those people who believe or who are interested in declaring that a municipality can. trade more successfully than a private person may, says the Christchureh Press, find something to interest them in the figures relating to the Wellington municipal' fish market. For the six months ended March 31st last, the receipts from the sale of fish amounted to £BO2, and the expenditure to £B44—a loss of £42 for the half-year. It wa.s not uncharacteristic of the chairman of the Markets Committee, a prominent Radical, that no allowance was made for interest and depreciation. Making tbia allowance, the loss amounted to £6O. Excuses of various kinds were put forward by one 'or two Councillors, but they were quite inadequate to explain why, if the private retailers were as extortionate as the advocates of the market alleged, the city could not do very well even after cutting prices a little. The fact that the running of the market cost the ratepayers £6O means that somebody had to pay for £6O worth of fish which was eaten by somebody else. This, perhaps, is the "social justice" of whicli we so often hear from the enemies of selfhelp and individual enterprise.