PRICE CONTROL AND WAGES

Southland Times, Issue 23816, 13 May 1939, Page 8

PRICE CONTROL AND WAGES

REPLY BY PRIME MINISTER COMMENT ON STATEMENT FROM LONDON (United Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 12. “If we control prices we are controlling the necessity for increasing wages,” said the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage) today commenting on the cable from London expressing misgiving on the part of banking circles at the apparent absence of wages control simultaneously with price control. “Already we have suggested to those who are interested in wages conditions in New Zealand that they should go easy on making demands and when we are talking like that we want to see that the machinery is proivded so that prices are not raised against those whose wages are expected for the time being to remain somewhere about what they are. There are quite a number of people in the community who have no reason to feel that the limit has been reached as far as wages are concerned, some whose demands for increases cannot lightly be turned aside, but speaking generally we have asked for stability on one hand from those who are controlling prices and on the other from those who are making demands, for higher wages. These sentiments can have only a temporary application while we are dealing with a difficult situation but a situation that was inevitable to anyone who did any serious thinking.”