RISING PRICES

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1606, 12 February 1925, Page 5

RISING PRICES

WARNING BY ATTORNEY-GENERAL

>(By Telegraph Press Association.)

WELLINGTON, Wednesday,

The increase in price of certain •classes of electrical goods, which has taken place recently, is ascribed by members of the trade to a ring of manufacturers in England either alone •or in collaboration with manufacturers in this country. Certain power boards also state that the prices of viable have gone up, which is having .a deleterious effect on present housewiring contracts. Sir Francis Bell, the Attorney-Gen-•eral, referring to the matter yesterday said: —"You may take it as absolutely definite that if a combination of manufacturers of, and traders in, electrical appliances were entered into to unduly arid unfairly raise prices to the public by eliminating competition—and even if such a combination were of the traders only, without the manufacturers—4he Government of New Zealand would use every •legal means to defeat such a combination. In the first place, they would prosecute under the Commercial Trusts Act every person in Now Zealand who became party to such a combination, and in the second lace, they would, by every means in their power, induce and encourage the various power boards to undertake the supply to the public within their respective districts. If a combination of manufacturers in England raised the prices unduly to the power boards it would then be necessary to find • other sources of supply. The Government has itself undertaken, and has encouraged and. induced the creation of huge works for hydraulic supply of electric current, and cannot allow that expenditure to create a field for unfair exploitation of the public, who have thus become enforced customers of the suppliers of appliances."