BACK TO FREEDOM.

Thames Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 17570, 8 March 1929, Page 5

BACK TO FREEDOM.

THE FIRST STEP. BOARD OF TRADE ACT. SHOULD BE STRUCK OUT. Perhaps it is not too early, with the first regular session of a new Parliament in .sight, to remind the Government and the public at large that the Board of Trade Act, which was marked down for repeal by the late Government, is still on the Statute Book. The Right Hon. J. G. Coates, the Reform Prime Minister, and the Hon. A. D. McLeod, the Reform Minister of Industries and Commerce, had decided, after an exhaustive examination of the Act and its operations, that it would be easier to end it than it would be to mend it, and then to embody its necessary provisions in a new measure.

Steps /towards this end were taken without any unavoidable delay, but unfortunately the, eagerness of members of the House to get away to their constituencies on the eve of a general eelction necessitated the postponement of this, and many other measures, until the session now impending. The good faith of the Ministers never was doubted, and many people, even now, are under the impression that the Act has been actually .repealed. That, as just indicated, is not the case, and, though there is good reason to believe that the present Government will carry out the inten- ' tions of its predecessors in this respect, this is no time to allow so important a matter to drift. The Board of Trade Act, as it stands on the Statute Book to-day, empowers the Hon. J. G. Cobbe, the new Minister of Industries and Commerce, to suppress competition, to'p l ' event combination in relation to any industries, to fix maximum and minimum prices or rates for any class of goods or services and to regulate and control industries in any other way he ma;' deem desirable. Mr Cobbe is a man to be trusted, and withal a man of prudence and experience, but- on Czar of Russia.' in all his glory ever wa&v clothed with such authority as that, thrust 'Upon this modest Minister ofl the Crown at the present time.