Journal. [1958]

of their total uselessness. "After all,"
he said, "who am I that I should
think I could stop Nature's inexorable law of cause and effect?" Furthermore, he said, "Why should I
think that I, with that article, or any
article, could put an end to human
stupidity?" The editor blew his
nose; he seemed close to tears.
AFTER the foregoing was written,
the Chamber Office received a
copy of Senate Bill No. 41, "An Act
fixing the maximum net profits
allowed to wholesalers and retailers
in the sale of commodities, creating
the Net Profit Control Board, and
for other purposes", introduced by
Senators Sabido, Lopez, Ledesma,
and Paredes. In the Explanatory
Note prefixed to the Bill, a paragraph
in the Journal editor's chapter on
Price Control (June, 1957, Journal,
_ \ r |~~~~~~~~~~~~~1

one of the chapters in his history of
the Quirino Administration) is quoted,
as follows:
"The Bill does not provide for the utilization and appointment of price control agents.
Our sad experience in the past makes highly
inadvisable the revival of such practice. In
one of the articles published in the American
Chamber of Commerce Journal, of June,
1957, when your Committee on Banks, Corporations, and Franchises, anticipating the
present condition proposed to recommend a
price control law along the lines herein proposed, the following comments concerning
the price control agents appeared, and I
quote:
" 'Thousands of price control agents, many of
them carrying guns, many of them venal, spread
dismay and fear especially among the smaller merchants throughout the country. With the ferocious
penalties provided for in the various control acts,
they virtually exercised the power of life or death
over the small merchants, particularly the Chinese.
No one will ever know the millions of pesos in cash
or in kind which passed into these agents' hands as
"gifts" desperately offered to mollify them.'
"We fully subscribe to the views of the
author on the matter. The presence of such
agents in the midst of our already deteriorating internal trade will only further aggravate
the situation."
We showed this to the editor, and
he said: "Well, that's something
come of that chapter after all, little
as it is." Later, when he had read
the whole Explanatory Note and the
Bill itself, he said to us, "Note this,
in the Explanatory Note:
"'...whereas it is not possible to fix and
control with a certain degree of stability
the prices of goods or commodities, particu.larly of imported commodities, because of
the constant price fluctuations abroad which
are beyond our contiol, the percentage of
profitslwhich may reasonably be allowed
can certainly be controlled.'
"This seems to indicate," conitnuled
the editor, "that the Committee
more or less agreed with the main
thesis of my Price Control chapter,
that prices can not be controlled, but
it got around this fact, or tried to,
by drafting a bill which-would control
the 'percentage of profits', and this,
the Committee, holds, can be controlled. The Committee, apparently
did not consider that, as profit is
normally included in price, it is still
attempting to control prices. The
desire for profit, of course, does not
dictate prices, except perhaps in the
case of monopoly operation, and the
dealing in prime commodities by
hundreds of importers and thousands
of retailers can never be monopolized
under ordinary conditions. What,
it seems, must be repeated over and
over again is that price is determined
by supply and demand and not by
an almost wholly fictitious 'lust for
profits'. Dealers must compete with
each other, and this keeps profits
down to the minimum consistent
with a continuation of operation.
There is only one thing the Government can do about reducing prices
and that is to stop interfering with
supply."

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of PHILIPPINES
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96

THE AMERICAN CIIAMBIER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL
February, 1958