Control And The Controllers

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 203, 14 May 1943, Page 3

Control And The Controllers

what is. happening to him under price-control a member of the tribunal has issued a little book.* He points out to-begin with that price control is as old as civilisation and has had almost as chequered a history. There was control in China in the time of Confucius — three thousand years ago. It was tried by Rome and by Greece, and even by ancient Egypt. Diocletian, for example, issued an edict in 303 A.D. fixing the maximum prices at which food and clothing could be sold, and the wages that could be earned to buy them. Although death was the penalty for those who offended, the "net result was failure." So another attempt was made, and then another, until some wit no doubt pointed out that the way from the market to the soup-kit-chen was paved with good Roman intentions. But as most of us know to-day, price-fixing is one thing and price-controlling another. If prices are fixed, and unforeseen circumstances unfix them-as they do inevitably in the course of a long war — the last state of the community is worse than the first. It is not possible in a free community to put a barrier between the consumer and the commodity that nothing short of gunpowder will disturb; and what is not possible in practice should not be laid down in theory. But it is possible to regulate the force at which the pressures will be applied, and that is control. The controllers of control are of course the public. The -powers they delegate to Parliament they inevitably take back again when the pressure on them becomes too painful, so that it is the consumer himself in the last resort who says how much or how little he will pay. He speaks last, and necessarily therefore speaks loudest. But if no one else spoke at all, and we all from the beginning indulged our greeds and alarms, six months of a world war would precipitate something like a civil war at home. Control prevents all that. *WAR-TIME PRICE CONTROL IN NEW ZEALAND. = H. L. Wise, M.Com. Member of the Price Tribunal. Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd. ‘T let every consumer know