ETHICS AND CONTROL

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 130, 5 June 1925, Page 6

ETHICS AND CONTROL

A correspondent, in a letter published in to-day's issue, comments on an aspect of the controversy regarding control of produce for- export. The correspondent deals with the subject from the ethical standpoint, showing from statements attributed to the advocates of "absolutism" how inferences may be, indeed have been, drawu that place the responsibility for British Press protests against control and depression of the Loudou market upon interested parties in New Zealand. An editorial in a Waikato paper is quoted to show that "every penny that goes into tho non-co-operative intermediaries is deducted from the suppliers'season's cheques." By strong combination it is stated dairy farmers can "defeat the machinations of 'bulls' and 'bears' who manipulate the market for their own profit." Loose talk in public of 4'machinations'' and "manipulations" has been fairly general throughout the Dominion, and how much oC such talk has filtered into the mind's of dairy farmers and assumed the form of settled convictions we have uo means of knowing. But evidence, of complicity of local firms and resident representatives of British firms in the agitation referred to in the London papers is wanting—at any rate has not been produced. On 'the other hand, it is perfectly easy to understand the apprehension of the British consumer when control of supplies and price of any necessary article of food is mentioned. All through the discussion favouring absolute control and compulsory pooling of dairy produce the fact that the merchant gives service appears to have received rather scanty consideration. Tf services of any sort are rendered they must be remunerated, whether in the form of profits, commissions, salaries., or wages. The producer uov'ji 1 uau hope to escape payment

of one of these; bijt "muehiuations" or .."manipulations" . are fatal to their continuance." Established distributing houses-have not | so built up their long .and wide- i spread businesses. Mr.: Motion,'a ' member of.the Board; stated at Dunedin only last Wednesday that •'the Tooley Street people" had expressed no hostility ■ to-, the Dairy Control movement; Who, then, if it was not of their own volition and in .the public interest, stirred the British newspapers to protest against control:? Clearly, local merchants would not rtfsh in where Tooley Street might fear to tread. As for the recent depression of prices in the face of lajrge accumulations of produce, that, surely, is but another instance of the operation of the law of supply and demand, and therefore beyond control of distributing firms domiciled or represented in Xew" Zealand. It is manifest that the zeal of some of the advocates of absolute . control has carried them, beyond the ethical borders of the question.* Merchants no doubt can take'care of themselves and their reputations, but in the present state of mind of many producers it rnav. be difficult for them to deal with insinuations made 'in public and private as affecting their good faith. The "absolutists," then, it is hoped, will in future be more guarded in their addresses, or at least supply acceptable and specific instances when making general charges of "machinations" and "manipulations."