WAITARA.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 16722, 24 April 1920, Page 3

WAITARA.

JTBOU OOK OW 3 CORRESPONDENT. April 24.—The Public Works Department is evidently getting a move on in connection with the Mam North Road. An American steam shovel has arrived for use in making the Awakino Valley Rohd, and 1 understand that a small army of men are employed in the tunnel. The metalling of Alount Messenger is being proceeded with slowly, so that we may yet live to see the road to Auckland completed. '• The unveiling of the memorial to fallen soldiers takes place in LTenui to-morrow. The choirs from the AVaitara churches are combining to take part in the service and wreaths will be deposited by the school children. A considerable number of Waitara people propose to be present. One cannot nelp suspecting that the profiteering inquiry is a lot of humbug. A man is lined for charging too much for a yard of cloth or a tin of food, but what the public! really requires is for the Commission to aim a bit higher if it is to do any really effective good and track the course of high prices it' bulk. Take benzine, for instance. I, is more than double the price it wa, few years ago, and the retailers, I learn on good authority, got no more profit on the present price than when it was half the cost, and double the capital is required. If the Commission could analyse this 100 per cent, increase and let the public know who is getting the extra thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds it would be solving a problem that is worrying a good many people. Exchange may account for some of the amount and freight for a good deal more, and if it is the shipping companies that are the culprits, then they should be blamed. It ..is simply tinkering with the problem to fool about with little shopkeepers, who have sold a tin of patent food or a yard of tape at a price liigher thazT it should have been sold. Take a commodity of every-day use and trace the price to its source, and perhaps then we shall know whether the millions of money are actually being made of which we hear so much. If the Profiteering Commission were to, say, publish the price for benzine in America and give the charges that makes its cost 30s a case or thereabouts in New Zealand, the public would then be enabled to judge whether it were the little or the big man that was making unfair profits if they are unfair. It is reported that there is no. improvement in Mi-. T. Elliot’s condition.