Page 1 Advertisements Column 5

Gisborne Times, Volume VII, Issue 443, 14 June 1902, Page 1

i. The workers of Auckland could with ease have their own bakers’ shops and their own flour mills,” remarked a speaker at the open-air meeting held under the auspices of the Trades and Labor Council last Saturday evening, He believed in cooperation on a small scale and on a large scale, and contended what could be done in the mattor of co-operation on a small scale could just as easily be accomplished on a broader—a national scale. Three weavers scratched together and started the Rochdale Co-operative a few years ago. Last year the turn-over of that movement, which had grown out of the earnestness of a few men, was about £70,000,000. There was an object lesson for the people of Auckland. Let them co-operate, let them unite and join with the Socialists : i endeavoring to bring about co-operation on a national scale. Speaking to a motion condemning rings, trusts, and combines, Mr A. Rosser, of the Auckland Trades and Labor Council, said trusts were an American invention. There the financiers had established corners in food supplies and other materials. Thence the trust disease was spreading to other parts of the world. The trusts were now beginning to rear their hydra heads in New Zealand. The milling combine which had been formed in the South had started to freeze out those millers who preferred to remain outside its grasp. Wheat had gone up, and the Southern bakers being drawn in the price of bread had steadily increased. The trust had commenced to bully the Northern Roller Milling Company, but he was pleased to see that the Auckland bakers had remained outside the trust. Recently, as they were aware, Yankee flour had been dumped down on the Auckland wharves, but the poorness of the quality of a lot of it, as compared with that manufactured in Auckland, bad rendered it useless for baking purposes. It might be good enough for American niggers, but it was not good enough for New Zealanders. He strenuously advised the people of Auokland to urge the Government to legislate against com- ' bines.