FOOD PRICES.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 377, 26 April 1915, Page 6

FOOD PRICES.

EXPLOITATION CHARGES.

MR FAIRBAIRN AND THE FOOD COMMISSION.

[A great deal of nonsense is being talked in certain quarters regarding the alleged exploitation of the public in the matter of food prices, and it would appear that there are some people who are disinclined £o accept Mr Justice Stringer's statement that the" Food Commission has beeft Unable to discover any exploitation. Amongst them is Mr Andrew Fairbairn, whose letter to Mr Stringer was published in THE SUN and other newspapers 011 Friday last. Mr Fairbairn has become rather notorious through the vendetta he has been carrying on a"gaiij§t his business competitors, and apparently he feels hurt that the commission should have ignored the evidence he gave before it in September last. THE SUN has gone into the matter, and some of the conclusions it has arrived at-, are set out in the article published below.]

Charges of exploitation are easily made, and meet with a ready reception from those who want to believe that they are the victims of it. A little enquiry into the present" agitation, however, will convince anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the principles governing the distribution of goods that these- charges of exploitation arise mainly out of Mr Fairbairn's curious notions regarding the conduct, of business and the desire of certain newspapers to make party capital out of a situation which has been produced by the war. - Mr Fairbairn stands convicted out of his own mouth. He claims to be a distributing merchant in the ordinary sense of the word, carrying large and representative stocks of such goods as are handled by the merchants whose j iniquities he has been proclaiming from I the housetops for years. If hey having ' branches * in Wellington,. Christehurch, and Dunedin, has been selling goods at ante-war prices, it is manifest that there cannot possibly t'liave been anything in the shape of exploitation by the other merchants. Where are. the traders who are Avilling to pay members of the Merchants' Association from 10 per cent, to 90 per cent, more than they can buy the same goods from Mr Fairbairn for? The only inference to be drawn from Mr Fairbairn's vapourings is that he is able and willing to supply goods at prices ruling before - the war, while members of the Merchants' Association are charging, and getting, 10 per cetit. to 90 per cent. more. There cannot be the least doubt that there is a huge fallacy underlying Mr Fairbairn's contentions, for the only possible outcome of such a state of affairs as he says exists would be that Mr Fairbairn's business would increase amazingly, while that of the members of the Merchants' Association would disappear.

Proofs Wanted. We challenge Mr Andrew Fairbairn to produce, say, a dozen reputable retailers who have paid any member of the Merchants' Association from 10 per cent, to 90 per cent, more than he could have bought the same goods from Mr Fairbairn for. Such phenomena should be subjected to a medical examination to determine whether it is safe to allow them to remain at large in an ordinary sane community. s It .has been said that ademagogue is a man who rocks'the boat and tries to persuade every one that there is a storm at sea. We say plainly that Mr Fairbairn > long-standing quarrel with the merchants of New Zealand should cause anything he lias to say about them to .be" accepted with the gravest reserve. If lie is not allowing his personal feelings to influence his judgment on the present occasion, we can only say that he shows extraordinary ignorance of the fundamental principles that govern the business about which he poses as an authority. What is Exploitation?

Exploitation means extorting excessive profits from the public, and until Mr Fairbairn produces proof that the net interest return per annum accruing to members of the Merchants' Association on their capital is such as can fairly be called excessive, he should refrain from reflections on men whose motives and principles will stand as much daylight as Mr Fairbairn's. His constant cry of exploitation unsupported by any evideuce that an impartial man like Mr Justice Stringer can accept, has become a nuisance and not the least of his offences that he has induced some innocent editors of Liberal newspapers to write many columns of twaddle on a subject that they seem quite unable to grasp the details of. Mr Fairbairn's contention that the commissioners must accept his evidence as proof of exploitation by the merchants or charge him with perjury, is quite as fallacious as many of his other fads. It is conceivable that the commissioners regarded his evidence as displaying such a degree of '' unconscious bias," as our legal friends say, as to render him incapable-of drawing a reasonable deduction from facts. Such a state of affairs is common, and it is quite possible that the commissioners considered Mr Fairbairn is .suffering from an hallucination in the matter.