ECONOMIC CONDITIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 September 1920, Page 6

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS.

"ORGY OF EXTRAVAGANCE." "MAD CHASE AFTER SENSORY PLEASURES." Conditions of present-day living formed a subject about which Mr. S. E. McCarthy, S.M., of Christchurch, spoke a piece in the course of a judgment in connection with charges against southern firms of profiteering. "What were the economic conditions which led to the passing of the Board of Trade Act, 1911)?" he askfll by way of introduction to p dissertation on the matter. "The war had suddenly caused an appreciation of our primary products. This, in turn, caused an appreciation of Iftnd values,' especially of rural lands. These appreciations had their share in causing a general inflation of values. The position is accentuated by the destruction of man and transmission power, as well as raw materials, owing to the vicissitudes of war, and their diversion from industries to warlike operations; by the general rise in the cost of transmission; by an adverse fall in the rate of conversion, owing to Great Britain becoming a debtor instead of a creditor nation; by a large proportion of workers engaging in strikes and go-slow policy, which latter may, not inaptly, be defined as a species of militant inertia, the basic force of which is a malignant dishonesty. In addition to- all this the considerable profits made out of land, commerce, and industry, and the high rate of wages prevailing, together with an inflated paper currency, has given momentum to an orgy of private extravagance dominating sections of all classes. We have had the unthinking herd engaged in a mad chase after sensory pleasures, whilst the increased and increasing prices for literature has deprived wellnigh all but the well-to-do of those solid joys of which the changes and chances of life cannot rob their happy possessors. We have been producing and consuming more. Prices have become so inflated that persons with moderate incomes find it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain • their families and themselves and keep out of debt. Out of this welter there has emerged the unscrupulous trader, bent on exploiting to the utmost the necessities, and vices, and the follies oi his fellow-citizens. The baleful activities of this class of trader are assist--Hig to waft higher and higher the eversoaring prices."