Foreign Demand and Local Prices.

If the wages in New Zealand had been doubled we should have got no more lor the foodstuffs we exported, and if these wages had been reduced 50 per cent, we should have got no less, and prices here would have been about the same. The foreign markets for our foodstuffs practically control on the average the local prices. The price one pays for the best butter in New Zealand is, in the long run, determined by what its prevailing price is in London. Producers are not likely to take less here if they can get more in Great Britain. Now, I am not going through all the above items to prove it. The Registrar-General has furnished me with a mass of figures in support of the view I am advancing, but they are too long for statement here: I assert that there is not a single item in the above list whereon any material increase in price is paid by the workers simply on account of an increase of wages under the Arbitration Act. Next with regard to the second important item—rent.