FLIGHT FROM THE ROD OF PRICES

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 80, 5 April 1933, Page 6

FLIGHT FROM THE ROD OF PRICES

Much ingenuity of argument is shown in the search for an alternative to letting a market find its own bottom. No less an authority than the British Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries (Major Walter Elliott) is reported lately as saying there are two remedies: — - The traditional one is to allow prices to fall sufficiently to enable surplus supplies to bo absorbed. The alternative is to attack the problem, at its roots by regulating supplies. , The Minister's preference is regulating supplies (otherwise called "quan-. titative regulation," or, shortly, "the quota"), and he tries to defend lhat very weak point, political incompetence, by adding:-— ■ Eventually it may be possible to form a consortium of suppliers who will themselves regulate marketings, but at first the* initiative must rest largely with the Governments. , . , Even so, Government initiative will hardly commend itself to people who feel towards State departmentalism the hostility so frequently expressed, as by Mr. J. P. Luke at the Chamber of Commerce dinner last evening. An honest analytical treatment, of the subject.is found in the' remarks of Mr. D. O, Williams, Massey College lecturer.in economics, reported yesterday. The "evidence-is so evenly balanced' that a compromise, tentative conclusion is the best to be expected," and Mr. Williams hopes for, "some transitional type of economy in which private enterprise will be allowed to function only within a framework of clearly defined national-' planning." But national plans are seldom consistent even .with themselves, and how, can any better result be expected, from a Parliamentary laboratory?