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Levin Daily Chronicle, 11 April 1918, Page 2

Early in March it was announced (says the Taranaki "Herald") that the secretary of the Taranaki Producers' Freezing Works Company, Ltd., had received advice that during the next five weeks 49,500 boxes of butter and 17,290 cratcs of cheese would be eleared from the Moturoa works. Sine® then the allotment of shipping space has been subjected to alterations with the result that the congestion at this port has been relieved to a greater extent than was anticipated. On Tuesday (April 2) the Corinna left New Plymouth for Wellington with 34,708 boxes of butter, while 495 crates of cheese were dispatched about the same time. This makes the total quantities forwarded to Wellington 68,650 boxes of butter, and 17,355 crates of eheeseThe works at Moturoa are thus practically cleared of butter at this date, leaving room for the storage of incoming cheese.

The meanest people in the United Kingdom just now must be the food hoarders. There is something unspeakably despicable in the idea of strong, well-fed men and women grabbing and secreting large stocks of food for themselves, when many ,of the poor, especially women and children, are suffering for the want of necessaries of life. We are glad to see the hoarders are being severely dealt with. An Irish M.P., Mr McCaw, M.P., for West Down, was fined £400 for having in his possession 32 weeks' supply of flour and 37 weeks' supply of tea, besides a quantity of other provisions. A retired Civil Servant was fined £200 for hoarding tea, split peas, cocoa, rice, soup cubes, and 154% lb of rolled oats. It was stated that he. was in the habit of spending iia time, in queues', outside provision .■•hops, competing with persons of small :ieans. Altogether 4 cwt. of food was round in his house, concealed under clothes and in boxes. A bank inspector was fined £150 for a similar offence.

fWe say, for instance, that our men are fighting for England to-day. So they tire. But. I ponder how much of the land of England many of them will ever get, if they live to come back (said the Rev. John 0. Harris, in a recent sermon at the Congregational Church, Kingston-on-Thames). Just a bit, six r'eet by two, to be buried in, and then someone will have to pay for thatl Look at the hovels some of them have io live in, the slums some of them will have to pay high rents for when they •ome home. Home! Here is a land syß;em which allows less than 200 men to own half the land of England, less than 20 men to own half the land of Scotland. Here is a system which for the past thirty years has been driving people off the land, crowding' them in ioul cities, forcing them to emigrate, until we discover to-day that we have not" grown enough potatoes and corn to last us more than a few weeks, and titled dukes and noble lords send us circulars frantically bidding us dig our backyards. I want to know who made us a nation of landless people, who made the laws that set the rights of property above the rights of mant Why is it that in an age so full of invention ■o widely extending the productive powers of man, and in which the fruits of human labour have been so enormously multiplied, that there is not enough to go round? There must be something wrong when bread is so dear, and flesh •and blood so cheap?"