278 WHEAT PRODUCTION IN NEW ZEALAND 



price; but the administration of the law was a matter 

 of extreme difficulty. Whether such was recognised by 

 the Government is a matter for speculation. There is 

 certainly no doubt that no serious attempt was made to 

 enforce the law rigorously. Failure was admitted by 

 the Government, but the Prime Minister in making the 

 admission attributed it to the fact that regulation of 

 economic forces is no greater a possibility than con- 

 trolling "the laws of the universe." But New Zealand 

 has not been alone in price-fixing experiments. In 

 Australia the policy of price fixation has been adopted 

 on a fairly large scale by all the States except 

 Tasmania, and latterly by the Federal Government. 

 The methods adopted have been two-fold; first, direct 

 price-fixing legislation ; and secondly, indirect legislation, 

 such as anti-trust legislation, state purchasing, or state 

 marketing. The former method has been the most 

 common. In a recent work on Price Fixing in Australia, 

 Mr. H. L. Wilkinson concludes that the policy has 

 not been successful. "When the legislation was first 

 proposed, and the price-fixing tribunals began their 

 operations, only the ultra-conservative section of the 

 Australian people opposed price fixing, or were openly 

 doubtful of its efficacy. After some two years of the 

 operations of the policy, it has become generally recog- 

 nised that, although fixing maximum rates may keep 

 prices down for the time being, it has not to any appreci- 

 able extent, at any rate, prevented a very large increase 

 in the cost of living throughout the Commonwealth. 

 The more strenuous advocates of the policy point to 

 certain conspicuous successes, and put its apparent 

 failure in other cases down to incapacity or want of 

 energy on the part of the price-fixing tribunals or the 

 Governments, but the mass of the people have become 

 very sceptical as to the policy being of much advan- 

 tage to them in the long run." Undoubtedly the policy 

 has prevented certain forms of exploitation, and has 



