BRITISH GOVERNMENT’S PROFITEERING.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16036, 29 January 1920, Page 6

BRITISH GOVERNMENT’S PROFITEERING.

"NO* WORK FOR THE HANGMAN.”

Under the above quotation, the Christchurch Sun comments racily on the recent disclosuics regarding the British Government’s profiteering in wool and. other commodities. Our southern contemporary remarks: It is no use saying one thing about the alleged wool scandals in Britain and meaning another. If the profits made are a tithe of those reported to have been made somebody ought to be hanged. That is the plain English of the situation. But it is not moral indignation that is the Bominion’s chief emotion at the present moment. 'Die average producer is like the average consumer—altruism is not his prime passion. He has a 20 per cent, feeling of shame that profiteering is so rampant, and a 50 per cent, emotion of disappointment that he has been virtuous absolutely for nothing. Consumers think they are shocked at such mercantile depravity when in reality 1 ! they are merely enraged at being the victims; and in precisely the same way, and with precisely the same moth-eaten morality, the wool-grower thinks his heart is bleeding for fhe Homeland’s shivering widows and orphans when it is throbbing with vexation because the profits seem all to have gone to the other fellow. But that is not what we sat out to say. Like New Zealand, Britain has some very severe laws against profiteering. It is not necessary there that a sale should bo actually effected: a profiteer is a man who asks a price that wculd give an “unreasonable” profit—and anyone at all can lay a charge provided he dees it in writing within four days. The complaint then comes before a local tribunal,on which, tlie working classes must be adequately represented, and if a prima facie case is made out, witnesses may be summoned, evidence taken on oath, books and documents called for, and the offender sent willy-nilly before a Court of Summary Jurisdiction. But there is no law there or here to guard the guardians. You can’t fine, imprison, hang, draw or quarter the Government which violates its own laws. You can’t follow every razor or reel of cotton or bootlace or pound of Scotch glue back and back past endless protesters till you. unearth at last the original scoundrel—that is to say, you can’t do it with dignity and effectiveness. You can’t always drop down like a hundred-weight of bricks on a shopkeeper "who was away at the time, and unfortunately did not notice before he went that his assistant had misplaced the price tickets.” You can think what yon like, but you can’t always do what you like to the hotel-keep-er who explains that "the watered whisky was drawn inadvertently from his own private bottle.” And strangely enough in Britain, you can’t take proceedings of any kind at all unless the profiteering, or attempted profiteering, is on articles specified in an official schedule issued by the Board of Trade. It requires no great effort of the imagination to conceive of the possibilities here. Then, finally, the complaint falls to the ground if the price asked covers “services rendered.” Buy your steak in fhe butcher’s shop, and yon have the law behind yon. Eat it grilled in a restaurant, and yon are in the powers of the Unseen Hand. Much, therefore, as we would like to see a hanging matah "to encourage the others,” we are doomed quite "certainly to disappointment.