Keeping Down Prices.

ALTHOUGH popular complaints against profiteering are vehemently made throughout India, nowhere do the authorities appear to have adopted steps to put it down. They are adopting a conciliatory and mild policy of appealing to the good sense of the merchants and helping them, as far as possible to obtain adequate supplies. A Madras message says that as profiteering prevails in Malabar, the Collector held a Conference of local merchants and traders and asked them to co-operate in keeping down the prices of necessaries and to spare him the painful necessity of exercising his powers to control the prices. It is not known whether the appeal had the desired effect, but the value of conferences of the kind cannot be doubted.