PRICES & WAGES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 May 1939, Page 7

PRICES & WAGES

MR SAVAGE’S CONTENTIONS. REPLY TO BRITISH BANKERS. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The relationship between price control and wages was discussed yesterday by the Prime Minister, Mr Savage when his attention was drawn to a London cable message stating that banking circles felt some misgivings at the apparent absence of wages control simultaneously with price control. Mr Savage said that if the Government controlled prices it was controlling the necessity for increasing wages. “Already we have suggested to those who are interested in better conditions in New Zealand that they should go easy on making demands,” said Mr Savage, “and when we are talking like that we want to see that machinery is provided so that prices are not raised against those whose wages are expected, for the time being, to remain somewhere about where they are. There are quite a number of people in the community who have no reason to feel that the limit has been reached as far as wages are concerned—some whose demands for increases cannot lightly be turned aside. “But, speaking generally, we have asked for stability, on the one hand from those who are controlling prices, and on the other from those who are making demands for higher wages. “These sentiments can have only temporary application while we are dealing with a difficult situation, but a situation that was inevitable to anyone who did any serious thinking.”