One useful way of curtailing consumption is to limit the opportunity of purchase by restricting the supply of goods to the shops. Steps in this direction have already been taken by the Board of Trade, but they do not go nearly far enough.
Shops all over the country are still crowded and being replenished with all manner of objects entirely unnecessary to a nation" battling for its existence. If the people cannot buy they must save willy-nilly, and it is for the Government to see that they cannot buy.
Another point worth mentioning is this: Since December the Government have been spending over£50,- 000,000 a year to stabilize the price of certain staple foods. Their primary object they have achieved, inasmuch as the prices of food in general have hardly moved in the past six months.
But in their secondary object, which was to remove any excuse for wage increases, they have failed. Between January and May wages increases were granted totalling.well over £50,000,000 a year—£50,000,000 towards inflation. This should stop forthwith, Wages should be placed under the same public control as that already established for persons and property. No variation either upward or downward should be permitted without Government sanction, which should only be given'for some specific reason, as, for example, in the case of the recent sharp rise in agricultural wages, which the Government themselves decreed in order to attract the necessary amount of labour back to the land.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.