CONCERN IS OFT EN being expressed that the Restric- tive Practices
Act is taking all unconscionably long time to produce any effect; and I was glad last week to hear that, in some industries at least. its influence has already been great—though not in a way that the public 'would hear about. A friend of mine in the business world has dealings with a firm which always in the past relied on secret agreements with its competitors to procure it the safe, steady margin of profit which was all that its owners wanted. Under the Act, these agree- .ments have either to be registered or 'abandoned; and rather than have them published, it was decided to abandon theM. As a result, for the first time the firm now has to fight for its markets; and this has prompted it to go into the export business—in which, rather to its owners' surprise, it is already meeting with some success. If only restrictive practices had been destroyed when the export need was even greater, after the war! As it is, even when agreements disappear, the men- tality that accepted them often remains. Already, I understand, some firms have found ways to use the let-out the Act provided—the clauses allowing resale price maintenance to be enforced by individual firms--to prevent the public from. getting the benefit of loWer prices.
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