Untitled

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 670, 7 April 1879, Page 2

W» have from time to time, in the co-' lumns of the Herald, written against the indiscriminate manner in which credit is given by our tradespeople to consumers of goods they deal in. We find the Wairarwpa Daily taking precisely the same view that we have advanced on the subject. But our contemporary goes further, and dwells upon the waste and want of thrift in Colonial families of the lower and middle classes. " How much," he asks, "of food is there not wasted day by day in bad cooking and extravagance? We believe that the waste in bread, meat, and beer is a far greater tax than the advanced prices at which they are retailed. It is not so much a change from a credit to a cash system of business that is required as a fair economy in the consumption of food and clothing. That we are as a rule careless and extravagant in supplying household wants is very notorious. The butcher knows that big joints of meat are thought very little of in the dwelling of the working-man. The baker knows that the labourer's wife, sooner than take the trouble to make home bread for her family, will take a lighter but less nutritious article from him at almost double the cost in money to her gudeman. Clothes are half worn out, and then thrown aside, with the same disregard for thrift. It is not indeed the extra profit which tradesmen force upon us that does the mischief, but, first, waste and extravagance, and secondly the facility with which people obtain credit. A man soon forgets the value of money when, without recourse to it, he can get any mortal thing he wants. In a town like Masterton it is not necessary to have two prices, one f or|caah and one f or booking, but it is

extremely desirable that more discretion should be exercised as to persons to whom credit should be extended. Wo hold that it is impossible to do a greater mischief to a man depending for his living on weekly wages than to induce him to take goods on credit to an undue extent until all his earnings are forestalled, and his chance of saving money or mak ing headway is altogether crippled. It is not the storekeeper that is the principal sufferer by the credit system — it is the working-man whom the system apparently benefits and really injures, who sustains the greater loss through it. If the present period of depression teaches persons to be more frugal in their consumption of food, drink, and clothing, and to endeavor to apply their wages, not to the process of wiping out old scores, but to the purchase of present supplies, we can afford to let the cash v. credit question rest in abeyance.