WAGES AND PRICES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 110, 12 May 1939, Page 7

WAGES AND PRICES.

English Critics Of New Zealand Methods. MISGIVING EXPRESSED. <R«cclvr.{ 11 a.m.) LONDON, May 11. Blinking circles feel that New Zealand's plan of price control should help to maintiiin the vhliib of the currency, but Home misgiving is expressed at the apparent absence of simultaneous wages control. It is pointed out that the wage index has mounted from 805 to IOIMi in three years, which forms an appreciable part of rising costs.

MR. SAVAGE ANSWERS.

EFFORT FOR STABILITY.

(By Telegraph.—Special to " Star.")

WELLINGTON, this day.

The cabled suggestion from London hanking circles regarding the necessity for wage control in New Zealand, was answered by the Prime Minister with a statement that "if we control prices we are controlling the necessity for increasing wages. That is a fundamental fact."

He added that those responsible for the raising of prices should understand that there was machinery to provide that prices were not raised against those whose wages are expected for the time being to remain somewhere about the present point, but there were numbers of people who had no reason to feel that the limit of increased wages had been met and whose demands could not be lightly set aside.

"But speaking generally,- we have asked for stability on one hand between those who are controlling prices and those making demands for increased wages," remarked Mr. Savage.