PRICE OF BREAD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12401, 14 October 1903, Page 4

PRICE OF BREAD.

The decision of the 'Colonial Conference to ask the Government to fix the price of bread may easily commend itself to those who wish to turn the Government into a dominating bureau, interfering with every detail of industrial life. But the public would have had more cause to feel ateful if the Conference had centred its energies in an agitation against adulteration, improper workshops, and short weights, evils from which the public very seriously suffers, and which come well within the ordinary scope of law. To say that .competition leads to adulteration is to say that the law against adulteration is not enforced. No law should be more stringently enforced- It is not a more serious offence to lower prices than to sell potatoes for flour, or to pass fifteen ounces as a pound. Indeed, if a baker, fulfilling all the just requirements of law, can sell his loaf at a halfpenny less than another baker, by reason of his superior plant, he is a public benefactor, not a public enemy. This proposition is another indication of the danger of the habit of going to the Government on any and all occasions, and should warn those who are advocating unnecessary legislation against rings and combines that they may incite much worse evil than the imaginary one they think to avoid.