PRICE FIXING

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 15, 18 July 1939, Page 8

PRICE FIXING

"NEW DEAL IN OLD ROME"

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—lt was Hegel, I think, who made an observation to the effect that while everybody said that we ought to be taught history, the only thing that we learnt from it was it taught us nothing. Unfortunately, Hegel did not have the benefit of the discernment of those who, some hundred years later, were acute enough to perceive the reason for the unhappy fact to which he had directed attention. It has remained for New Dealers the world over to point out that times change and, of course, old principles and the results of old experiments lose their validity. I mean that in reference to price fixing for example, the failure of attempts to control prices m a primitive economy does not show that this should not be perfectly simple in our much more complex—well, that might not appear to follow exactly, but you see what I mean.

I am indebted to an American publication for an extract from a book by one Haskell, called "The New Deal in Old Rome." . Please ignore the bracketed interpolations if they spoil the story for you. The facts, of course, *have no real significance for us, and I was merely amusing myself by speculating on the assumption that they did. "Late in-the third century after Christ the anarchy was ended by an energetic and able soldier and administrator. Diocletian, with army backing, became dictator, reorganised the administration, and stabilised the currency on what was believed to be a sound basis. (Please mark the words "stabilised" "and "sound.") Unfortunately, like some modern rulers facing a similar problem, he overhauled his new monetary unit. Prices promptly responded with another violent rise ("rising costs!"). Diocletian recognised the suffering that resulted, but naturally did not understand the cause (naturally, i.e., being a dictator). The trouble he thought lay in greedy profiteering ("vipers!"). In 301 A.D. he issued his famous edict setting maximum prices and wages ("Aren't we the Government?"). After denouncing tlie profiteers in the preamble, he announced maximum prices for between seven and eight hundred articles and types of work and service. In its technical descriptions the .edict reads like a modern tariff Act. There is millet ground and millet unground; olive oil first quality and olive oil second quality; goose artificially fed and goose not artificially fed; cabbages best and cabbages small; washed Tarentine wool and washed Laodicean wool; maximum salaries are included for barbers, wagon makers, [elementary teachers, teachers of Latin and Greek, and many others. (Maximum wages for opponents of the administration, and minimum wages for its friends.)

"The Act had teeth. The penalty for evasion was death. The emperor had so expanded the civil service that a contemporary wrote, with disgusted exag-, geration. that half ; the men ,of * ■ /the empire were on the Government payroll. (He would now write with disgust only.) There were plenty of inspectors. But this early attempt at inrice fixing failed. It is recorded that | business men closed, their shops, 'that ■many, articles of commerce disappeared, and that food riots resulted. A dozen years later We read the obituary of the Act: 'For merest trifles blood was shed, and out of fear nothing was offered for sale, and the scarcity grew much worse until after the death of many persons the law was repealed from mere necessity.'" .

From unofficial sources I learn that on the repeal of thelswDiocT^+'an gave an audience to the Press. When the question was asked why he had taken no notice of the collapse of a similar experiment some three hundred years 8.C.. he pointed out that times were in the habit of. changing, and a famous Roman poet was alleged to have expressed the idea in the words "Tempora mutantur." Nothing could be clearer than the fact that 300 A.D. was not 300 8.C.—1 am, etc.,

DOUGLAS SEYMOUR. Hamilton, July 15.