BOARD OF TRADE.

Northern Advocate, 21 July 1917, Page 1

BOARD OF TRADE.

DEFENDED BY MINISTER. LARGE INCREASES PREVENTED,

In the eour.se of a speech in the House of Representatives on Wednesday night the Hon. W. D. S. Mac Donald reviewed the work of the muchmaligned Board of Trade, cataloguing some of its good deeds, whereby the people of New Zealand had been saved many hundreds of thousands of pounds during the last year or two. After expressing the conviction that if the maximum price had not been put on wheat the price of flour to-day would have been £18 or £20 per ton, he pointed out that the Board had also saved small coal consumers fully 4s a ton. They had dealt in Christchurch with high rent and meat questions, and, although no State meat shops had been opened there, butchers knew that if they did not keep near the Imperial Government prices State shops would be opened. Rent and other questions had been satisfactorily dealt with in Dunedin, while the butter question had also been settled on a reasonable basis. Another matter dealt with was the price of kerosene and petrol, and, as the result, compared with prices which the Vacuum Oil Company wanted to charge, by those actually agreed upon, the Board saved the people of New Zealand £108,000 for twelve months. The Board arranged bread prices at Hamilton and also at Pukekohe. Mr McCombs: They pay fifteen shillings for a dinner there. (Laughter.) The price of milk was fixed in Wellington, while the Board of Trade, by opening two meat shops in Auckland, saved consumers £40,000 in the first six months. The price of meat was also reduced in Gisborne, Palmerston North, Masterton, Wanganui, and other places. They investigated meat prices in Wellington, but found the shops there were supplying meat at as low a price as they could sell it. The higher cost at other shops was due to heavy expense of delivery. The scarcity of white pine had been investigated. The Board had 'also gone carefully into the position of retail trades, and an arrangement had been made that prices would not be raised without proving the necessity to the Board. Though prices had not boon lowered materially, the operations of the Board had prevented large increases. By arrangement with the Colonial Sugar Company the Board had effected a saving of £80,000 yearly to sugar cousiimers. The Board's work had effected total savings amounting to £1,380,000 per annum, half a million sterling of this being a saving on moat.

"Something moro will have to ho dom\" continue,! thp Minister, the. House heartily concurring. ■ "Something will have to l>o done to put things on a proper basis. They have

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had control of food supplies in England; we haven't got to that stage, but we know where we are drifting. It all depends on the number of men who will leave New Zealand."

Mr Poland contended that notwithstanding the investigations of tho Board of Trade, prices of many commodities had gone up to an enormous and unwarranted extent, big wholesale merchants having made immense profits. The member mentioned instances where wives of soldiers were unable to live in decency and comfort, while merchants were piling up huge fortunes. Now that the Second Division was about to be called up, the problem had become acute, and something practical would have to be clone.