The Star. THURSDAY JULY 3l, 1919. MUNICIPAL GOAL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12707, 31 July 1919, Page 4

The Star. THURSDAY JULY 31, 1919. MUNICIPAL GOAL.

The City Council is to be asked now, by its special Coal Committee, to go into the coal, business to stay. This was the recommendation adopted yesterday by the coirilnittee, and the matter will come up for Consideration at the next meeting of the full council. Between now and the date of the meet? ing someone .jri. authority will have to do some hard and clear thinking if a useful experiment is not to end in an expensive failure. The council’s intervention in tho coal business was justified on various grounds, since, if it did not actually add to the city’s supplies it at least provoked a very full discussion of the position, it checked a tendency towards panic, it proved that supplies were not unobtainable, it had a strong steadying influence on prices, and it brought the coal merchants themselves forward with what is, in effect, a price-fixing scheme- But it is just as well to remember that the council has been doing its business so far with its own staff, using the Town Clerk and the City Surveyor to control operations, and it is a tolerably safe guess that these two officers of the municipality have had to give their normal duties very scant attention during the last fortnight. It would be very bad business to attempt to make the temporary arrangements permanent, and before the council decides to undertake coal dealing permanently it ought to go carefully into the cost of organising a coal department. The finances of the present experiment have not been very closely scrutinised, because the financial side was not the important side of the matter. The Mayor’s purpose was not to provide cheap coal but to provide coal, and the price was a secondary consideration. But if the desire of the committee is to control prices it will be necessary to examine the position much more carefully. In the first place there must be an assured supply of fuel of good quality; and in the second place that supply must be available in sufficient quantity and at a figure low enough to enable the Council to exercise a real influence on the local market. The State Department has always been able to sell at prices lower than those charged by the dealers, but in practice its influence on the market has been almost negligible of late, for the reason that its limited supply was speedily exhausted. So long as supplies continue short the public will have reason to be ■grateful to the City Council for anv addition it can make to the city’s supplies, without looking too closely into the price question. But a permanent municipal coal depot is a verv different proposition. Now there is no attempt here to discuss the general principle of municipal coal dealing. That issue, so far as this journal is concerned, is not arguable. Coal is an essential commodity. It ought to be controlled nationally. The experience of the past flour or five years leaves no possible room for doubt on that score. If Governments are too timid or too slow to take action, then is.perfectly competent for municipalities to intervene. But the point to he emphasised is that if a municipality does interreno it ought to attack the problem oh a business basis and after careful consideration of all tho Conditions. "When the special committee presents its recommendations it ought to support them by a report giving exact information as to the supplies at the command of the city and the finances of the scheme, and unless that information ia forthcoming the council ought to refer the recommendations hack. There is no need to add that the attitude of this journal towards the scheme is sympathetic ; but political sentiment ought not to blind anyone to the importance of business principles.

The report presented at the annual meeting pf the National Association of Manufacturers* of the United Sta&s, which, on May 19, opened a three-days* session in New York, dealt -with a number of which are pregnant in the public mind at the present moment but paid particular attention to labour unrest., “We concede to all men,” said the report, “ the right to organise for legitimate purposes, but to none do wo concede the right to conspire or lend themselves to Overthrow the principles of this Republic.” Tins, of course, was in reference to the activities of the extreme section of Labour, as becomes apparent in an immediate subsequent paragraphit behoves' the elements of the wage earning masses who are now being used as shields for such people as the Bolsheviks and the I.W.W. to dissociate themselves and thereby make their cause the more just and the more easily served. Professional trouble-makers of whatever classes and the heckling Pharisees of industry should ho suppressed by a strong hand, and every should be required to show that he is producing something of greater Value to society than discord and unrest.” The committee set on foot an investigation for the purpose of endeavoring to get to the bedrock of the labour unrest, and concluded that whatever unrest there was was superinduced by “propagandists who were seeking to Russianis© the country.” It was admitted that the ranks of the unemployed had grown very materially since the war closed, hut this was not due so much to scarcity of work as to the fact that many either refused to return to work, or to work for a smaller wage than they had been accustomed to during the war.

There "was abundance of work, it was alleged, at a wage “that is commensurate -with the cost of living,” and therefor© the committee called iupon . all people to ** help rid onr country of those elements of discord which are perpetrating their damnable practices in the name of justice and democracy.” Some ’of these persons were serving penalties for the violation of tb© law and should be indefinitely kept where they were, while those who were familiar with th© reason for their incarceration and who were “defending their infamy should be made to share the same lot.!’ Tim in a tabloid form contains the views of the manufacturers of the United States on the labour unrest ; and. the, chief elements of its existence. With regard to .industrial

disputes the opinion was that a national hoard fox* the adjustment hy arbitration of disputes was not desirable, but that the States should create commissions (for considering disputes between employers and employees.. Such commissions, however, should not have tho power to enforce their decisions, nor to forbid strikes or lockouts, but they should have the power to see that a combination to strike or lockout was not lawful until certain antecedent conditions had been complied with; one of which might be the submission of tho matter in dispute to the commission for possible arbitration. The need of Americanisation was emphasised, and compulsory health insurance was objected to on the grounds that it would impose on “employers, employees. and the general public a costly and unjustifiable paternalistic burden,” and that it was a “ coercive Socialistic scheme proposed in the guise of a legislative cure-all for ill-health.”