ENGLAND TO-DAY

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 146, 18 December 1919, Page 13

ENGLAND TO-DAY

"SEEMS TO HAVE LOST ITS BALANCE."

Mr. Walter Cole (of Cole's Cash Drapery Co., Cuba-street) returned by the Moeraki yesterday from a business and health trip to England. Speaking of his impressions, he emphasised tfie industrial upheaval everywhere. "England seems to have lost its balance entirely," he said. "No doubt the sensible Labour leaders -and the majority of thinking people see that things must got on to a normal basis to enable the great reforms of tho war to bo maintained. The miraculous seenm to have happened to workers"vi England. People earning IBs to 25s before' the war are now getting 40s to 60s, with greatly curtailed hours. The question is: Can tho workers retain thoir gains? All decent people hope they can." The-general opinion was that Britain will settlo down, and tliat when her production increases she will have a boom time of high prices, which will be stabilised on the high-waga basis. At present, however, the increased amount of money in circulation (probably twice as much as before, tho war) meant that the home demand for goods was so large that a great evil was being perpetuated. Greater demands for a lessened supply meant that "value" had become nothing but a word in dozens of industries. It was easily seen that if a manufactured article Vos wanted in six places, the price was secondary. Wholesalers and retailers were scrambling for the finished article to supply then1 customers. 'Knowing that price did not count, the manufacturer sacrificed finish and appearance to get goods through. He gave way to the workers, the builders, the painters, the raw material agents, and J;l he haid dealings with: In a', nutshell, T;he good old : fashioned competition to give the best article possible for a price had disappeared. Competition, which kept the complete organisations of the Homeland healthy and sane, had been obliterated to a large extent, and thus the enormous soaring up of cost in every direction, > The only_ way to alter things was more production, and so to get competition back into the national system. Comparing prices in England with New Zealand, Mr. Cole waß amazed to find everyday thing* such as toweFs, calicoes, and flannelettes were being retailed at 20 per cent, or more above the New Zealand prices. This was accounted for by the fact that most New Zealand firms laid in stocks before the more acute stage of {he famine prices had been reached. From indications in Melbourne, it would not be long before those stocks were depleted irid prices reached English levels here.