BOARD OF TRADE ACT

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160724, 10 August 1920, Page 2

BOARD OF TRADE ACT

PROTEST BY TRADERS. (Per United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, August 9. A Dominion deputation of wholesalers and retailors waited upon the Prime Minister and Minister of Industries and Commerce this afternoon to request an amendment to the Board of Trade Act. Mr Wyles said the law as it stood not only prevented the carrying on of trade according to long established usages and customs, but cast a suspicion on the traders. Section 32 of the Board of Trade Act was incapable of exact definition. There should be a definition which was capable of being fully understood, so that traders might know whether they were within the law or not. It was unfair that the stigma of profiteering should bo fastened on the whole of the traders because there were a few isolated cases. If the Act had not been brought into operation, or was repealed, not one honest trader would endeavour to take advantage of it. ' The Government should face the position and explain that high prices were due to economic causes.

The Prime Minister agreed that profiteering was merely one cause of high prices. The most important causes were reduced production, increased demand, shortage of supplies, and high wages. It had become the business of the Government to show the people that profiteering was not the sole cause of high prices and that if profiteering existed it would be punished. The Government was anxious to keep down the cost of living to the consumer. It was anxious at the same time to avoid being harsh or unjust to the trader. He could not recollect that at any stage the Governmen had discriminated between retailer and wholesaler. Solution of the cost of living problem was to be found largely in increase of production. He agreed that the farmers had been doing very well, but other sections of the community should not forget that practically everything the farmer required in his business had more than doubled in price in recent years. He did not think any injustice had arisen from the administration of clause 24, requiring the supplying' of information about businesses. The principal difficulty that had arisen was in regard to definition of an unreasonable profit under clause 32. The deputation was asking that provision should bo made for replacement. This very point bad been discussed when the Bill was before a committee of Parliament, and the statement had been made by experts that if profits were allowed to be based on replacement value tho Government might as well leave the legislation alone, since it would be impossible to secure conviction in any case. The Government would take into consideration all the arguments that had been advanced by the deputation. He believed that if the Board of Trade Act wore amended during the present session it would be made a better Act from the point of view of both traders and consumers.