The Consumer’s IS ONLY THE BEST GOOD ENOUGH?

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28950, 18 July 1959, Page 12

The Consumer’s IS ONLY THE BEST GOOD ENOUGH?

[By

GEORGE SCHWARTZ.

tn the "Sunday Times"]

(Reprinted by Arrangement)

It cannot be /denied that under competitive enterprise lower grades and qualities than the best are put on the market; but before this is regarded as an admission that the bad does drive out the good in the capitalist free-for-all, we had better examine the argument that only the best is good enough. Judging by the fact that one of the best pictures sells at £275,000, the good can come pretty expensive. The best that money can buy is a comfortable doctrine when money is no object. For most of us it is no object, with the two ends rather close together. How does competitive business cater for us in this respect? If London Transport were thrown open to competition some enterprising fellow (anglice pirate, profit-monger, blackleg, chiseller, thug) would get hold of some old buses, tear out the seating, and run them over London Bridge and Waterloo Bridge in tne rush hours at a penny a go. Standing room only. Cheapness, is A ll This would be a degradation of the standards of travel provided by the existing monopoly, which advertises, in effect: “You want the best seats. We have them,” omitting the proviso: “If you can get on the bus, and if you can get a seat.” It is true that if you can get a seat you travel like a lord for your 3d. fare over the bridge, and no doubt it hadn’t ought to be otherwise, not on no account. The public could make this clear by speedily driving the pirate into bankruptcy, but I have an idea that the rascal would cash in handsomely. For one thing, many of the public would sooner do the short journey with the minimum of comfort than stand on the pavement in the rain. Even on a fine day and with plenty of room in the bus a saving of tuppence each way comes to Is 8d in a fiveday week, and Is 8d freed for other expenditure is a consideration. The fact that people don't settle the matter out of hand by taking a taxi shows that money as an object comes before the best.

Give your boy (or, if it comes to that, your daughter) a lecture on doing things in style and establishing canons of taste, and then give him the money to go to Paris by the Golden Arrow for his summer holiday. The youngster will turn - up a month later triumphantly announcing that he got to Istanbul by cadging lifts, travelling third, and sleeping rough. Or your daughter will gleefully proclaim, “00, daddy, at one stage we went in a guano truck and we did smell afterwards.” “Confound it,” you will roar, "you still do. Go up to the bathroom, take everything off and throw the bundle into the garden for the cleaners.” That should but won't stop you boasting about the time you went to the West Indies on a banana boat. Value is All

Thank goodness there is no law and no standard of convention compelling us all to travel Pullman, see that private enterprise has a project for cheap-fare liners on the Atlantic crossing at £25 a trip. The food will probably be on cafetaria lines instead of the Lucullan repast now proffered with impeccable service. At that price I am prepared to bring my own grub. Did I read somewhere of a fellow who never paid less than £lO for his shirts? 1 wish he would give me one, so that I could wear it when writing this article, and ask you if you noticed any intellectual and spiritual uplift in the content. There are many chaps who can’t pay, or don’t feel like paying. more than 25s tor a shirt Competitive enterprise caters for them, and what competition ensures is that they get the best value for 255. If you don’t believe that, you don’t know the facts of economic life. Of course, manufacturers can do better that and some of them are sour because the system doesn’t call on them to do better. Well, we’d all like to cater exclusively for the best people, and I sometimes get peeved because these articles I write aren’t printed on vellum. At times I persuade myself that I have a number of lofty pathbreaking ideas that would be wasted on you groundlings, but a

little bicarbonate of soda soon settles that.

1 don’t live in the best part of London but I haven’t yet appeared at the Central Criminal Court, which is more than some of the best people in the best part can say. I haven’t the best of houses, and I doubt if I have the best of anything inside it, except the best advice, of which I could do with less. Who Knows? I am grateful, therefore, to the system which puts at the disposal of my limited income the secondrate, third-rate, fourth-rate and so on down the line, particularily as I sense that my own contribution to the common pool may be third-rate or lower. I recognise and appreciate the highest on the rare occasions when I see it and the other fellow pays for it, usually at the expense of the Exchequer. All I ask from the authorities is protection against gross misrepresentation and against anything deleterious to my health, on the understanding that nobody, even in Whitehall, kno rs whether scrag-end of mutton is really inferior to prime beef. Just over a week ago the betting, fostered by the experts, was five to one that a man brought up on smorgasbord wouldn't last two rounds. As for anyone knowing what is best at any time in art, mirtic, drama, and literature, don’t make me laugh.