RISING PRICES AND HIGH WAGES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23203, 29 May 1937, Page 16

RISING PRICES AND HIGH WAGES

ro riiE editoh Sir,— The Labour Government must have known that high wages would mean high cost of living in "God's own country,- for the simple reason that, without any real scarcity of food or clothing, the food and clothing countries have the power to get any increase in wages back in the cost of living. But the most cruel and scandalous result is that old-age pensioners, sustenance men, men on commission with no big wages, have to pay the same price for the vital necessaries of life as the man who is getting £lO a week. Result: Semi-starvation for adults and innocent children. Why not drastic action against profiteering? The papers are full of the woes of the producers, columns are written about the poor farmers and the poor milk producers; the doctors recommend parents to give their children plenty of milk. How is this to be done with milk at 6d a quart and with a family of five or six children to be fed? Where is our humanity, not to talk about our Christianity? All the press talk is about producers—not a word about consumers. As a Labour man, I hold that the Government will have to do more and talk less. With the majority it has behind it, there is no excuse for its not taking drastic action to relieve not the big wages man, but those who are down and out, and thus make this grand Dominion " God's own country" in reality.—l am, etc., Radical.