"STANDARDS DAY"

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 74, 24 September 1941, Page 6

"STANDARDS DAY"

MR. DOIDGE'S VISION

PEEP INTO FUTURE

COFFINS, SOAP, AND

WOMEN

A humorous picture of New Zealand under standardisation was painted in the House of Representatives yesterday by Mr. F. W. Doidge (National, Tauranga), when criticising the Standards Bill. There was a possibility, he said, of a "standards day" being introduced when a man would get up in the morning and use a standard towel and standard soap in his bathroom, partake of a standard breakfast and go to his office and work a standard day on standard pay. It would be possible for him on his way home to pass his wife and not recognise her on account of her wearing standard clothes. He might even pass 200 women on his way home and not really know whether he had passed that number of women or passed the same woman two hundred different times. Developing his theme, Mr. Doidge said that the sequel to this would be the use of standard tobacco, standard music, and that a man would be attended to by a standard doctor, frojn whom he would get standard treatment at standard pay, and when he ultimately died he would b.e buried in a standard coffin. "All these are possibilities," added Mr. Doidge, "but we hope they will not materialise." TWO METHODS. There were two methods that could be adopted in connection with standardisation, voluntary and compulsory, Mr. Doidge said. The. Minister in charge of the Bill had adopted the compulsory method. That was clear to those who made a full study of the measure. In quoting the United States, the Minister had failed to say that the system there operated under the voluntary method. He had also quoted the United Kingdom, but had not stated that while some compulsion.was being used in wartime there, after hostilities ceased a return would be made to the voluntary system. Under the Bill the Government was adopting its old methods of State control. Machinery was provided for the Minister to grant | and revoke licences. If the Bill had been introduced on a voluntary basis, there would be little objection to it, but instead of that, it was just another measure tightening the grip of State control. Mr. Doidge said that many witnesses who appeared before the Select Committee to which the Bill was referred, while favouring the adoption of standards, objected to anything compulsory. A system of standards would be of the greatest value to farmers as far as spare parts for their machinery were concerned. There were thousands of makes and no uniformity. He produced a bolt which had cost 8s 6d, but which under standardisation should not cost more than one shilling. Merchants had to stock thousands of spare parts and perhaps sell one in a year. These spare parts where an anathema to the merchant and a bugbear to the farmer. ON VOLUNTARY BASIS. He also .referred to the multiplicity of drums containing kerosene, oil, and other supplies. There was no standardisation, and the bungs were all of different size, and shape. On the other hand there was "the possibility of sameness, which of necessity meant, ugliness. . If standards were made compulsory, each manufacturer would be manufacturing the same article on the same standard and there would be no incentive to break away from that design. The uisposition would ] be for. an article to "stay put," and there would be no attempt at improvement. He instanced the competition of the past twenty years, saying that in that period the world had seen more advancement than at any other period, and it was reasonable to assume that this advance would go on. But if the manufacturer had to conform to a set of standards it would be a definite bar to progress, in that it would necessitate consultation with the Minister if the improvement constituted the setting up of a new standard.