Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1914.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 79, 30 September 1914, Page 6

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1914.

THE FOODSTUFFS PROBLEM After a considerable delay which has led to all sorts of ugly rumours, the Government has acted upon the first report of the Foodstuffs Commission. The result, as disclosed in the Order in Council issued yesterday and the debate on the subject in the House of Representatives, is to expose the absurdity of those rumours and to show that the Government has acted wisely and well. The fixing of the price of an article in common use is not quite so simple a proceeding as some people imagine. Time was when the fixing of prices was one of the normal functions of government, but the penalties on "forestallers, regrators, and engrossers" have long since passed into the same limbo with sumptuary laws and other curiosities of an age to which regulation was the normal thing, as freedom is to us. The legislation that has been recently adopted in many countries to restrain the power of commercial trusts shows that even an age in which commercialism has run. riot begins to find that there are limits to the doctrine of liberty, and few people dispute the wisdom o£ the attempts that have been made within the last two months to prevent the exploitation of the public for which the abnormal conditions established by the war provide special facilities. But the exercise of the power with which our Government has been armed for this purpose obviously demands the utmost circumspection. The Government was wise both to appoint a Royal Commission for investigation and advice, (and also to exercise a discretion of its own before carrying out the Commission's recommendation. Though the Government held the Commission's first report for nearly a fortnight before taking action, to represent the interval as spent in "dilly-dallying" is a ridiculous ex&ggera.-

tion, and the suggestion that the object of the delay was to get better terms for the monopolists is a monstrous perversion of the facts The Order in Council issued yesterday is a better one than if the Government had carried out the original proposal of the Commission without "modification. And one reason why it is better is that it offers less scope for those interests which the Government has been accused of favouring. What the Foodstuffs Commission at first proposed was that the maximum price should be fixed for milling wheat at 5s 3d per bushel f.o.b. at the nearest shipping ports, and for flour at £13 per ton f.o.b. at the ports of Lyttelton, Timaru, and Oamaru. But after negotiations between the Crown Law Office and the Commission, which appear to have originated in the practical difficulty of drafting an Order that would make equitable provision for all the ports of the 'country, the maximum was reduced in the one case to 4s 9d and in the other* to £11 15s, with the entire concurrence of the Commissioners. Their object, as defined in their original report, was to give all holders of wheat and flour, whether millers, farmers, or merchants, full value for their product, while at the same time " partially, if not wholly, excluding profits that are referable solely to the war, and which, we think, not unreasonably may be regarded as illegitimate." It is remarkable that the "maximum thus, fixed for wheat is an almost exact mean between that originally proposed by the Commission and that fixed in New South Wales — 4s 2d. In the latter case there has been a loud outcry, on the ground that the farmer, who gets no compensation for a bad season and who should now receive special encouragement to meet the urgent needs of the Empire, is being discouraged instead. The maximum of 4s 9d now approved by the Commission and inserted in the Order in Council had also been previously recommended by the Victorian Commission, and appears to hit the mark very well. An interesting statement was made by the Premier yesterday about the efforts made by the Government to deal with the rlifficulty in another way, viz., by the purchase of wheat in Sydney. The veto imposed by the New South Wales Government on the exportation of wheat will, however, prevent the further application of this remedy. As we argued yesterday, New Zealand has herself largely .to blame for any loss which she may suffer from the failure of this source of supply. The need of reciprocity and co-operation with Australia — commercial no less than military and naval — is one of the lessons of the war which should be translated into practice as soon as peace returns. .