REGULATION OF INDUSTRY

Southland Times, Issue 23502, 7 May 1938, Page 8

REGULATION OF INDUSTRY

INCREASING CONTROL OF TRADE ADDRESS BY MR DOWNIE STEWART “In this changing world, in your walk of life, you, more than any other profession, are affected, or likely to be affected, by great movements on foot,” said the Hon. W. Downie Stewart in his address at the annual conference of the United Commercial Travellers’ and Warehousemen’s Association of New Zealand, which opened in Dunedin yesterday morning. “Looking round at the other professions, I see little change .in their pre-war and present-day environment. All have new technique, but fundamentally neither their objectives nor their methods are changed. But in your world, where you act as intermediary between producer and consumer, there are great changes in the world that must have far-reaching effects.” Mr Stewart instanced the steady obstruction to the movement of goods and capital through the desire of every nation to possess a self-contained economy as a safeguard in case of war or for other reasons. He need not, he said, elaborate that point, which was not a new factor and which was known to them. ’ Within each nation a complete transformation was going on. Hitherto the guiding principle of all their activities had been what he might call the directorship of the market, or, rather, the directorship of the consumer. The consumer called for what he wanted and they supplied it. This system had provided the mass of the people with an abundance and a variety of forms of consumption never before equalled in the history of mankind. But now that vital principle, which was the foundation and inspiration of all their work, was being undermined and challenged. CONTROL OF TRADE Everywhere trade and industry were passing under regulation , and control. Marketing boards, supervising boards, and commissions were steadily whittling away the directorship of the consumer and replacing it by the directorship of the producer. As that process developed, the consumer ceased to be the regulating factor in their work and a guide to their actions. The economic structure tended to grow more rigid, inelastic and complex. The new process was called planning, said Mr Stewart. It assumed that bureaucrats knew better what they wanted than they did themselves. The sugar-coated phrase “planned economy was used in many different countries. His chief objection to it was that it tended to stop progress—to crystallize everything at a given point, to stereotype. If the State or a monopoly board had decided what quantity or kinds of motor-cars or boots to produce it would not listen kindly to the consumer demanding. something else. The whole foundation of their work was being sensitive to new wants. But the State, in deciding what they should wear and where and how they should live, must be dictatorial, conservative, and reactionary.

The present system had many defects, but these could be gradually cured. It was the only system under which the freedom of the market as a regulating factor and the freedom of the individual could be assured. In view of its great achievements in increasing production and the standard of life for millions of people, fostering progress in trade and commerce, they should not lightly abandon it. The more industry was Controlled and regulated, the more their free initiative, enterprise, and shrewd judgment in meeting the demands of the market would be cramped and stultified.