COMMUNITY BUYING

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 245, 10 July 1920, Page 9

COMMUNITY BUYING

— <h — • ONE WAT TO CHEAPEN COST OF FOOD. (By "Sylvius.") In America there 13 a great coast-to-coast movement in active progress which has for its object the achievement of many things by way of community action. One has only to peruse the American • papers to • read of communal •kitchens,..communal sowing-bees, communal ba'bj'-rearing, community singing, ' and community buying.. We are a long way- from America, and a long way behind her jn many respects—in some fortunately so—but tliero is a good deal to be 6aid in favour cf any kind of scheme which cuts out the middleman— the mere passer-on—and so effects a reduction in the cost of living. In respect to our fruit and vegetables, for example, a. considerable saving could be oil'eoted in the cost of such everyday necessities of life, if people would band themselves together in. little groups of ten or twenty, and purchase their goods wholesale at the markets, where sales are held regularly every morning on six days of tho week. Tlio needy housewife looks rather shocked when she is asked to pay Cd. for a fairsized cabbage and Bd. or 9d. for a cauliflower, and she has every cause to do so when cabbages wero sold 'as late as yesterday for ss. a sack, and good fresh cauliflowers wore obtainable at 10s. and lis. a sack. The difference—which could be saved—goes to John Chinaman (the one person in our community who never complains of the cost of living), who is said to belong to a ring as strong and inviolable as any which exists in Wellington. Frequently, during a glut, one may see such vegetables ae cabbages selling as low as 2s. per sack, but rarely does the retail prico fall in proportion, Of course, the market fluctuates daily, sometime? hourly, and cacn. community would require to have its buyer on the spot, if it dealt only in. a small way; but there is no reason for which one buyer should not make the purchases for a. dozen groups, and so cut down to a minimum the- middleman's cost. There are many who do not believe for one moment that municipal markets will bring about any reduction in the price of goods so marketed, and that if anv proposal of tho kind is given effect to'it will resolve itself finally into just such a system of auctioning as is practised every day in Blair and Allen Streets; but community buying (as seme people already know) offer/; a means of lowering the cost of at least somo of the necessities of life, and the idea only needs a start to bocome a real saving to many people.