TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3213, 17 October 1881, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1881.

We brought before the notice of our readers a few weeks ago the subject of cooperation as applied to local industries, and illustrated our remarks by a reference to the progress made by the Canterbury Farmers' Co-operative Society. Iα following up the subject it is well to remomher the adage that "God helps them that help themselves;" and, bearing this in mind, we would ask whether the time hap not arrived when, with the altered circumstances of so many of our sheepfarmers, a change might not be brought about in the mode of conducting their business ? We mean that part of their business that necessitates the employment of an agent at the port of ehinment of their wool and other produce. Whatever the rates of charges may be at the present time, there can be no doubt about this, that formerly the producers suffered heavily under a scale of charges to which they would never have submitted had their pecuniary positions enabled them to dictate their own terras to their agents. There can be no doubt about this either, as soon as a producer is in a position to select an agent through whom to ship his woo], that he receives offers to transact his business for him the liberality of which is astonishing when compared with the charges which he had previously been paying. The vast difference between the charges which an independent producer pays, and thoee with which one less fortunately circumstanced is debited, has suggested to many the possibility of securing better terms than those which the most favored have obtained. It is thought, for instance, that though the freight charges home from Napier and Wellington are the same they might be very much reduced, for the reason that some agents will offer three and a-half per cent commission to the producer for sending his wool through them. An enquiry into the cause of this apparent liberality has led to the information that the charterer, or ship, as the case may be, pays a per centage to the shipping agent. The question which then arises naturally enough is this : Are not the sheepfarmers charged a higher rate of freight, not for the carriage of their wool, bnt for the nnrpose of paying a commission to the shipping agents ? If this be the case the sheepfarmers say, " Let us charter our own vessel ; let as many of us join together whose wool will freight a ship, and so let us who grow the wool keep the expenses of putting it into the market as low as possible." Here we have the principle of co-operation fully illustrated. But it is not in freights alone that a saving might be effected ; rebatements on insurances and exchange on money should not be lost sight of. In the ventilation of this subject nothing can be further from our thoughts than a desire to interfere with the legitimate profits of agents. But what we contend for is this: that it is the bounden duty of producers, to themselves and to the country, to obtain, not only the best market for their produce, but to cheapen the cost of production. Some most laudable efforts have been made recently in the trial of the Melbourne market to secure the first of these desiderata, and the second may, probably, be obtained by cooperation. On a small scale the Napier market has been tried with success, the prices realised at our local wool sales being equal to those obtained at London, with, of course, the saving of sundry charges incidental to shipping home, and the interest and exchange on the moneyLast year there were buyers at our wool sales on account of English and American manufacturers, and there is no reason why, from the small beginnings that have been made, very large results should not follow.