The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, MARCH 3O, 1912. THE STANDARD OF VALUE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 79, 30 March 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1912. THE STANDARD OF VALUE.

An enquiry into the nature and causes of the variations in the standard of value in New Zealand was recently pompleted, .by Mr .James W. Mcllraith, and the result reaches us in the form of a pamphlet .issued from the Government Printing Office. It is the research in economics of a post-gra-duate at, Canterbury College, and as there is no University Press in' NowZealand the Government generously undertook to print and distribute the essay. In a preface to the work, Mr J. Hight, Professor of History and Economics, remarks that there is a vast and promising held for economic research in New Zaland, but hitherto it has been worked chiefly by occasional visitors from abroad. The essay covers wide ground, measuring the changes in the general level of prices year by year since 1860. The author also attempts to ascertain not only the extent but the causes of changes in the local price level. Such causes, Mr Hight points out, may ho grouped under two heads: (1) Changes in the conditions of production of commodities and of services, due to the general increased (or decrease) in the efficiency of the productive powers of nature, labour, and capital and thenorganisation; and (2) changes affecting the amount and the nature of money and all substitutes for money in use. The essay is interesting throughout, and contains much solid matter for thought and consideration. A chapter dealing with the problem of price is especially well designed. In it the author says; The problem of price is perhaps the greatest pi\>blem of practical life. The whole history of civilisation lias been in a measure the history of prices. Its advance has been roughly indicated by the increasing ease with which mankind has acquired the necessaries and increased the luxuries of life. For the vast majority of the human race the stniggle has ever been to adapt means to ends, to extract the greatest possible utility from the disposable spending-power. The struggle has been simplified by the adoption of a common medium of exchange; hut, so far, no medium has been devised that has the same general pur-chasing-power from one year to another, much less from one generation to another. What we actually find is that the price of the sovereign, or, more correctly, the weight of the sovereign in grains of gold, is fixed; its purchasing-power, however, varies with every change in the general level of prices. It is, therefore, a most unsatisfactory because a most unreliable standard of deferred payments and deferred purchases; but no better standard has yet received the approval and acceptance of civilised races. Those who receive fixed amounts of gold for services rendered—such as (a) the wage-earning class, which is in most countries an ever-increasing class; (h) those whose renumeration is partly fixed by custom—e.g,. lawyers and doctors; (c) the sellers of commodities —o.g., boor—the prices of which are regulated by custom; and (d) those whoso duty or right it is to pay or

receive fixed sums .at stated periods-—j 0.g., pensioners, lessees, lessors, borrowers, and lenders —all these are closely affected in different degrees by a change in the level of general prices. The degree in which they are affected depends, of course, upon the extent j to which the prices of the individual commodities they use vary. Taking into account the different character of the consumption of different classes, and the fact that the degree of price change varies from commodity to commodity, wo see that it is possible for the general level of prices to remain unaltcrd, and yet for the interest of some of the above-mentioned persons to be affected beneficially or injuriously; while, on the other hand, the .general level of prices may change " without any injury or benefit accruing.