ECONOMIC DANGERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 May 1938, Page 6

ECONOMIC DANGERS

HON W. D. STEWART’S SURVEY SPREAD OF DICTATORSHIP By Telegraph.—Press Association, DUNEDIN, May 6. “In this changing world and in your walk of life you, more than any other profession, are affected by movements on foot,” said the Hon W. Downie Stewart in an address at the opening of the annual conference of the New Zealand Commercial Travellers’ Association today. Mr Stewart instanced the steady obstruction to the movement of goods and capital through the desire of all nations to possess a selfcontained economy. Everywhere trade and industry were passing under regulation. The dictatorship of the consumer was being replaced by the dictatorship of the producer, whether a board or the Government, and, whenever that process developed the consumer ceased to be a regulating factor, while the economic structure became more rigid.' This new process assumed that the bureaucrats knew better what the consumer wanted than they themselves. The whole foundation of a . traveller’s work was being sensitive to' new wants. The State could only be dictatorial and reactionary. The present system had defects, but these could be cured, and it was the only system under which a free market and a free individual choice could be assured.