HOARDERS OF SUGAR

Hokitika Guardian, 8 May 1920, Page 4

HOARDERS OF SUGAR

WHAT OFFICIAL SEARCHERS FOUND IN SYDNEY.

SYDNEY April 28

lii spite of figures which show that there is in the country a sufficient quantity of sugar to meet all requirements, tho sugar shortage which has been felt ever since November last continues. The explanation is that sugar hoarding is going on in every direction; and the limited, though apparently sufficient supply is not big enough to meet the persistent demand. It is not possible to buy six pounds of sugar from any retailer anywhere in South Wales. One asks, for two pounds, for instance, and is quite certain that one will get no more than one pound. Every housekeeper in the country knows this, listens to tho frequent assertion that sugar “will he scarcer and dearer yet”—and promptly proceeds to build up a reserve. She tours the district, applying at every grocer’s shop for sugar. The grocer, if lie has any sugar in stock, must sell a little—that is the new law. Gradually our housekeeper, by dint of much walking, gets half a dozen pounds together and marches home in triumph. She does this perhaps twice a week, and on a top shelf in her kitchen she may have twenty or thirty pounds of the precious food stowed away in little paper bags, to which she keeps adding. That is going on everywhere. Housewives boast to each other of the little reserve stored

away against future trouble. If "everyone stopped hoarding, and used up their hoards before buying any more, there would be a glut of sugar in New South Wales. Hoarding is excusable, perhaps,, in the case of housewives, but what shall wo say of the big linns which are indulging in the .same, practice on a much grentot scale. The other day an inspector—whose duty it is to check the returns of sugar in stock, scut in under a new Federal regulation—visited the huge' factory of a firm of chewing-gum makers. The firm’s return showed nine tons in stock. The inspector fossicked in a back room and found 28 tons. The man in charge assured him that that was all they had. The inspector didn’t like the way some boxes were piled. Behind them ho discovered another <ls tons. Result: fine of £25, silVd some undesirable publicity. The candy factory of three Greeks was visited. They displayed 32 bags. Another 138 bags were found hidden ill a loft. Fined £lO. A grocer sent in no return. An inspector found that this man had hidden three tons away in a house in the suburbs, and was holding it in anticipation of a- rise. For this gross profiteering ho was fined £lO. ,