The Price of Bread.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XL, Issue 7842, 20 May 1904, Page 8

The Price of Bread.

The Auckland Herald, m an ariiclc on the price of bread, says:—ln England in twenty years the rate oF wages •went up 12 per cen^. all round, and for ihe same time the cost of food fell 40 per cent. There the workers ware great gainers, as wage-earners must be when wages go up and the prices of commodities go down at the same time In iNew Zealand, on the other hand, wages generally have gone up. hut at the same time prices of foodstuffs also hare gone up, and with a vengeance. Perhaps it will prove a rource of satisfaction to the housewives who have votes to know that increases m prices are inevitable under the Seddon system. Kecimtly Mr Seddon stated that there could not be settled conditions under industrial arbitration. Experience has shown that this means tbat pr:cas mzst continue to go up beciUEe wages go np, and that wages must go up again because prices have gone up, and so on ad inficitum Mr Seaaon has throat^-md to start a State flcurmill, What is he going to do with it ? He might as well try to euro a broken leg with a poultice as try to cheapen broad by grinding wheat at State expense. The Bt%te aourmill idea is only a subterfuge, or an example of Seddonian " bluff." 80 long a8 Jabour candi-ions are in a stite of flax, so Ion" will employers be in a position to point to awards as the excuse for high prices and for uniona cf employers that have exceeded their legitimate scope. The artificial social edifice that is now fopped by the dear loaf will collapse as soon as there is depression in trade. It would be better if the remedy for the dear loaf Were found now, so that workers may get the full benefit of their wages and so that traders, other than the miller and the baker, might get a fuller share of the good times. In other countries the dear loaf is an evidence of bad statesmanship. In New Zealand it is a direct outcome of the policy of meddle tor which. Mr Seddon is admired m some quarters. Thete might be the chanoa ot a cheap loaf if that policywere laid aside for two or three years