Ottawa Agreements

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 308, 23 September 1932, Page 13

Ottawa Agreements

Sir—ln your report of the Hon. J. GCoates’s review of the Ottawa Conference at the Wellington Town Hall on Tuesday last the advantages to New Zealand from those agreements were stressed. £ would like to point out a few. matters that will count in the last analysis of the proposed prosperity that is predicted via those agreements. 1. In measuring out the gams obtain cd by preference to New Zealand goods in the British market, can we approximately determine the losses to. manufacturing and secondary industries nowestablished in this country, by .the removal of existing protective tariffs. It is essential that this matter.be examined carefully, because within its folds lie the future development and progress o. the Dominion. . . . ■ . , , 2. It is impressed upon our mma tnar a rise in wholesale price levels must be. obtained, and it is further stated that such, a rise would not affect retail,prices. It is claimed that the disparity between wholesale and retail prices must be. bridged before the consumer in Britain or. New Zealand would suffer. The question is whv are retail prices not kept level with wholesale prices. Can it be imagined that the profit motive underlying business is responsible, or are there other causes. The harvest of unearned increment rents, rents on towns and city properties, am. profits and dividends play a great par.in preventing any fall in retail prices. Wages and salaries are the measure o. consuming power, and prices, cannot by anv chance exceed the capacity or. mat measure without at the same time violating the value of money. The purchasing power of the wages, salaries, and dole of Britain as circulating rhrouga the hands of the people, will decide not only the volume of goods sold, but the leve. of prices. Low wages, low prices; industrial and economic twins. If there is some mysterious cause preventing retail prices from equating with wholesale prices, other than profit motivation and extortionate rents and land values, then, iu the interest of humanity any consistency with a -Christian age, it should be explored and permanently removed. Should we carry out tbe advice of Professor Keynes to the world, and increase spending power, unless we now entirely remove the fundamental cause of the dis-equilibrium and consequent suff.'ring. a worse repetition is inevitable. The agreements as I view them insofar as they are made known, have the glorious obiect of giving room in reciprocal commercialism, in return, for the right to control a standard of living.— l am, etc., JOHN TUCKER. Secretary, Storemen and Packers’ Uniott, Wellington, September 22.