DISTRIBUTION OF GOODS

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27637, 19 April 1955, Page 7

DISTRIBUTION OF GOODS

“BUSINESS LOSING CONTROL”

‘The Press” Special Service HAMILTON, April 18.

A warning that business was losing control over the distribution of the goods it produced was given by Mr J. Boyd-Clark in his presidential address to the annual conference of Associated Chambers of Commerce today. “We live in a day of big labour unions, big Government, big farm groups and big business—each and all competing for public hearing,” said Mr Boyd-Clark. “But business management, unlike labour, agriculture and Government administration, suffers from the handicap that it cannot speak with a united voice because the very system which it seeks to preserve is competitive. “Business has lagged behind in its public relations. It has been too busy producing both the necessaries and luxuries of life to win the battles of public opinion, and in some cases is losing the right to distribute what it prdduces. “As other bodies gain control over the distribution of what they do not produce—housing, health benefits, food, electric power—business faces the prospect of becoming a suppliant, a contractor for a body or bodies which will eventually decide what shall be produced, by whom, in what quantities, for what price, and how it shall be distributed—a mass of irksome and uneconomic controls.”