"MENACE TO BUSINESS”

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20387, 30 December 1937, Page 11

"MENACE TO BUSINESS”

STATE CONTROL OF TRADE RETAILERS ALARMED Reference is made in the leading article in the December issue of the trade journal of the New Zealand Federation of Drapers, Clothiers and Boot Retailers to the National Government’s plan for retail distribution of boots and blankets among the necessitous unemployed and the rejection of the offer by the retail trade economically and efficiently to handle this business. “The inevitable bungling resulted,” states the journal. Questions were raised about the quality of the blankets and the materials in the boots so distributed. But "no one could blame the postmasters or the Labour Department officers for what had occurred; it was just as we had forecast and expected. ' Possibilities "Behind this innovation there was also the uncomfortable feeling among our members that the entry of* the State into the domain of distributing footwear and bedding was not one to be allowed to occur without protest, because State encroachments into spheres of private trading which may be intended as temporary only are likely to develop into permanent activities in State enterprise. The postmaster who is giving away boots and blankets to-day may be selling them over the counter to-morrow, instead of sticking to stamps.

"Now we have a new Government with new ideas, and one of these Ideas or ideals is the nationalisation' or socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Some of us may have been inclined to regard this objective of the Labour Party as a sort of pious hope or article of faith, which brings considerable comfort to believers in it—like ‘that blessed word Mesopotamia’—but which there was no real or serious intention of implementing and applying in the near future. “Such a view, however, now appears to have been ill-founded, and it seems that, having acquired the most important cog in the wheel of ‘exchange,’ in the shape of the Reserve Bank, and control of produolion by commandeering all dairy produce at the point of production, the State is now moving actively to control the business distribution, and is starting by assuming charge of retail food supplies from our farmers to the consumers. Need for Vigilance “The State has taken over a firm nf butter and egg merchants at Wellington. paving a handssme sum for goodwill and book debts, and appointed the principal of the firm as director or dictator of the internal distribution of foodstuffs, with arbitrary powers and the full weight of the State behind him in fixing prices and controlling supplies and distribution. "Such a development is distinctly alarming in its prospects for every body of retailers. It emphasises Iho need for that eternal vigilance which is the price of freedom and liberty, and that solidarity in our trade association which is essential if such a menace to business is to be met with all the resistance in our power.”