BOARD OF TRADE ACT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLI, Issue 9290, 11 August 1920, Page 3

BOARD OF TRADE ACT.

COMPLAINTS OF TRADERS,

DEPUTATION TO MINISTERS

WELLINGTON, August 9,

A Dominion deputation or wiiolesale iand retail traders waited upon the Prime Minister and Minister for Industries and Commerce this afternoon to request an amendment to the Hoard of Trade Act/ ■ . ,

Mr E. H. Wiles was the chief speaker. He said the deputation was entitled to speak for the men engaged in trade from the North Cape to Bluff. The Board of Trade Act in its present form was a menace to the ordinary usages and customs of trade as carried on for generations past, and was offensive; to business people, who were doing their business in exactly the same way as before the war. It created suspicion of the merchant and the retailer in the mind of the general public. The Act had been passed in such a form as to appear to place the blame for high prices on the retailer,; who ;r.eally liad less, to do with them than anybody, concerned; The Government should have looked further back towards the manufacturer and the pro■ducer. He did hot. suggest any unfairness in administration, but the Board of Trade and the Tribunals" could 'not do justice to. the traders since they lacked trade knowledge.' Profits, said Mr Wiles, had to be assessed on the replacement value. No other system of business was sound. Profits .had to be averaged, and only the result .of a year's trading would show whether or not the trader had made unfair profits. Merchants and retailers, as long as they conducted their business in a.normal way, ought not to be subject to investigations which caused irritation, waste of time, and expense. Mr Wiles stated that he was convinced that, generally speaking, there had been no profiteering in New Zealand. No'rate of profit could be fixed beyond which profiteering would begin. The profit must be dependent on the conditions of the trade and the business. ._ If a. trader was not allowed to equalise his profits over all the goods handled, he might as well go out of business.. To drap honest men before the Tribunals and make them, prove that they were honest was an indignity which ought hot.to be tolerated.

The deputation asked, Mr Wiles said, that traders should not be subject to interference in the ordinary course of trade.; If the Tribunals had power to consider the question of profits and to pick out one article from among many others withotit considering the circumstances in which the profit was assessed on that article, then nothing but gross injustice to tho trader could ensue. No tribunal could say what would be a reasonable ■■profit in" any particular case without knowing all the details of the business. -He thought that tlie public ought to be made 'to understand that high prices were due to economic conditions.

The most important amendment of the Act desired by the trader.:, Mr Wiles indicated, related to Section 32, which deals with, unreasonable profits. The deputation requested that the words " which in view of all the circumstances is unreasonably high," should be used in the definition of an illegal profit. This amendment, and other amendments on tlie lines indicated by Mr Wiles, were necessary, in the opinion of the'traders, to make the Act just in its operation. The amendments were taken from the British Act. ' , . \'■ , The deputation,' added Mr Wiles 3 ' felt that Section 24 of the Act in : fringed the ordinary principles of British justice by requiring traders to supply the Board of Trade on request with ultimate details of their business, and by authorising the board to publish this information. In his reply the Prime Minister said lie agreed that profiteering was merely one cause of high prices. The most important causes were reduced' production, increased demand, shortage of supplies, and high wages. It had become the business of the Government to- show the people that profiteering was not the sole cause of high prices, and that if profiteering existed .it would be punished; . Tlie Government was anxious to keep down the cost of living to the consumer. It was anxious at the same time to avoid being harsh or unjust to the trader. Ho could not recollect that at any. stage the Government had discrimi-.; natcd between retailer and wholesaler. | The solution of-the cost of living problem was to be found largely in an increase of production. He agreed that the farmer had been doing very well, but other sections of the.-, community should not forget that _ practically, everything the farmer required in his husiness had more than doubled in price in recent years. He did not think that any injustice had arisen from the administration of Clause _24 requiring the supplying of information about businesses. The principal difficulty that had arisen was in regard to the definition of '" an unreasonable profit" under Clause 32. The deputation was asking that provision should be ma.de for replacement. , This very point had been discussed when the Bill was before a committee of Parliament, and the statement had been made by experts that if profits were allowed to be based on replacement . value, the Government might as well leave legislation alone, since it would be impossible to secure a conviction in any case. The Government would take into consideration all. the arguments that had benn advanced by the deputation. He believed that if the Board of Trade Act were amended during the present session it would be made a better Act from the point of view of both traders and consumers.