COST OF LIVING REPORT.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3618, 3 September 1912, Page 5

COST OF LIVING REPORT.

THE MERCHANTS’ ASSOCIATION’S VIEWPOINT.

WHY THEY DECLINED TO GIVE EVIDENCE. [PEE PEESS ASSOCIATION.] WELLINGTON, Sept. 2. Mr Harold Beauchamp', president of the New Zealand Merchants’ Association, interviewed concerning the report of the Cost of Living Commission, was asked why his Association refused to 'give evidence. “We declined.” he said, “to recognise the Commission as a tribunal capable of giving fair, unbiassed and impartial consideration to the evidence submitted to it by members of the New Zealand Merchants’ Association.

“It was, in their opinion, useless to submit their evidence to a. tribunal which was not expected to give it fair consideration. “Ah- Fair bairn, one of the- members of the Commission, has, we contend, been in avowed hostility to the Association. We allege that Mr Fairbairn possessed a strong bias against the Association and its members, and could not exercise that impartiality in considering and judging upon their evidence which the was entitled to expect and without which the inquiry would have been useless and a farce. “Furthermore, the Association considered that other members of the Commission had had no commercial training or any particular knowledge of' economics. “The Order and Reference recognised that the subject was properly one of economics, and as such demanded that the Commission should be composed of men who had had wide commercial experience and who had some knowledge, at least elementary, of the principles of economics. The Commissioners were so manifestly lacking in these qualification that it was impossible that the conclusion arrived at by them would be of any value in determining the causes of the alleged increased cost of living and what action, legislative or otherwise, should be taken to bring about a reduction of such cost.” It was a significant fact, he continued, that the retail grocers who had in their evidence given before the Commission complained of hardships inflicted upon the retail trade by the Alerchants’ Association had in almost every case been customers of the firm of Fairbairn. Wright and Co., of which firm Air Fairbairn was a principal. It was also noticeable that Air Fairbairn led all the evidence adduced by. these witnesses, and was, so far as press reports showed, the only member of the Commission who questioned his own accountant. It must be plain to all reasonable men that the Alerchants’ Association or its members could not recognise the existing Commission as a fair or impartial tribunal. They would have stultified themselves by giving evidence before them and submitting their case to such a tribunal. The Merchants’ Association and its members have nothing to conceal, and before an impartial and competent tribunal would have been prepared to give such evidence and information as was in their power relating to the prices of articles of food, etc., extending over a long period of years. It is clear that the further increase in the cost of living is due to the higher standard of living which has obtained in New Zealand in common with the whole of the civilised world. I attribute the increase of the cost of living, in a few words, to (1) rates of wages of workers, (2) shortening of hours of employment, (3) diminished outDUt of work as compared with ‘former* years, (4) extravagance cha-r----ncterising till classes of the community. With regard to the contribution of members of the Merchants’ Association to the pay roll of New Zealand, it lias been ascertained that the members of it (and them only) employ , 700 married men and 1192 single men, and pay for salaries and wages an annual sum amounting to £304,109.