BOARD OF TRADE

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLI, Issue XLI, 29 October 1921, Page 5

BOARD OF TRADE

-♦—- AND THE RETAIL DRAPERY BUSINESS. In the course of tba annual report of the Wellington Retail Drapers, Uothiers, and Mercers' Association the following statement appears: I "At tho time the committee was elected the menace of the Board of Trade Act, as it was then being interpreted, and tho curious interference with sound methods of trading by th© Department of Trade and Industries, ' as it was at that time being administered, were having a malignant influence- upon the public mind, and one of the commfttee's first duties was to send a representative deputation to ' the president of the Board of Trade to ' explain the utter unfeasibility of any ' attempt at the fixation of prices, or of abandoning the well-established principle of selling at" replacement value. Steps were next taken to place ' before the newspaper press reliable ' trade information, and the extent of their'response during the present year! has compensated in some measure for ! the anxieties of 1920, and the tmfor-!l tunate impression created in' the pub. ""' ho mind. i "In spite of these laudable efforts ' on the part of your executive, however, since the last, annual meeting the , whole of the members, in common with i other traders, have passed through a sharp reaction from the period of warinflated prices, while very heavy losses ' have been made in marking .'high cost stocks down to to-day's .replacement value, a process involving in many cases a loss of actual capital. It is a matter for congratulation that every I member has avoided, the' .ultimate re-' suit of deflation from a 'boom' period that would have ensued with the most disastrous effect upon the solvency of. all traders, had not the original pro-' nouncement of the Board of Trade re- j garding a rate of profit only sufficient • to cover working expenses been subverted." - ~ I . "", — 9 .