PRICES SOARING

Waikato Times, Volume 90, Issue 14088, 18 June 1919, Page 6

PRICES SOARING

NO PROSPECT OF FALL. WHAT SYDNEY FIRMS SAY. The good old pre-war times of cheap prices are gone, never to return (says the Sydney Daily Telegraph.) We maybid them a long farewell. Nothing will ever be as cheap as it was. There exists a vague hope in the heart of the housewife that if she only -waits a little while the price of dress materials and the hundreds of other things in which she is keenly interested will fall to approximately the level of her purse. She had better not wait. Take the cose of some of the chief staples used in clothing. Wool, judging by the reports of the latest London sales, is steadily increasing in price. An increase of o to 10 per cent, is shown. Cotton is in just as bad a way. The war kept cotton down; for four years there have been short crops in America. The southern cotton farmers in the United States have made up their collective minds to hold their present crop uptil they can sell for at least 30 cents a pound, and also to reduce their 1919 acreage by one-third. Cotton, they say, cannot be produced at present market quotations and allow the farmers the riffht sort of livelihood. They are thoroughly organised. It sounds like a threat of another southern rebellion. If you do not buy a cotton proods now you wi!i not be able to get at anything like the present price hereafter. At any rate, that is what the people who grow cotton in America say. Flax Fibre Shortage. What about linen ? Phx fibre is normally obtained from Ireland, Belgium, Germany, and Russia. The main supply has for many years been raised in Russia near the German border. Russia can confidently be ruled out as a main source of supply. The Bolshevik farmer has more absorbing interests. Belgium and Germany are in a similar situation. There remain Ireland and parts of England and Scotland. But the, Irish supply is quite insufficient for a world supply, and every item of producing costs has increased. There is little hope of a better supply of any of these staples in the near future; though Australian wool, if manufaclured in Australia, should, one would think, decrease in price.

" Now that peace is signed?" says the housewife hopefully. But peace, as has been seen, will make no immediate difference in prices. World Overstocked. Sydney firms are not hopeful. There is generally admitted to be vast stocks of goods in the warehouses and in the shops bought at pre-war or war prices. The business men were practically forced to purchase those stocks. And the same over-stocking prevails not only throughout Australia, but all over the world. And not only have they these high-priced stocks, but more are on order, ordered probably many months ago; and they are compelled to take delivH-y at war prices. With all these stocks waiting to be unloaded, extreme care must be taken by both wholesale and retail houses that no financial crisis occurs, which would react upon all sections of the public. This overstocking is causing vast capital sums to lie idle with loss of interest and profit charges. Cheaper Than in London. One large retail house says that, despite the cry about high prices, the public in Sydney to-day can buy goods more cheaply than they are being bought in London. The local prices for imported ' cotton and wool poods are lower than the present London quotations. On imported goods customs duty has to be paid, not on the prices paid, for them on purchase, but on the prices probably many months after purchase, ruling at the time they reach here— An article bought at I f',s duty has on occasion to be paid on 48s. Naturally the shops blame the customs for adding its burden to prices. The rise in wages and the increa/ed working expenses due to industrial legislation are also binned. Yet it is a fact that certain firms have made big profits during the war. The reason is explained by one house as being due to better management. Though the gross profit is at a lower rate than before, by the turning ovr of Hie slock more often during tin 1 year there has resulted a greater aggregate profit. Whatewr the specific local and trmeral causes, there underlies all Hose the general rise in the price of living, with which the rise in waires is intimately connected. That in itself is suffi-cient-to sound the doom of Ihe days of cheap buying ami cheap selling.