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Lyttelton Times, Volume X, Issue 602, 11 August 1858, Page 6

To the Editor of the Lyttelton Times. ■ ' Sib,—ln your issue of Saturday last you have ■■ a paragraph on the price of meat, in which you throw out the idea of cooperation on the part of the inhabitants to supply their own wants.' Whatever opinion may be generally entertained as to the justifiableness of raising the present price of meat, I think that few reflective people will deny the utility of cooperation in a small community to supply its most urgent wants., We cannot be all butchers, or bakers, or boatmen, or hewers of wood, or drawers of water; but we all feel the necessity for meat and bread and fuel and water, and therefore we have all an immediate interest in obtaining these elements of existence in sufficient quantity and at reasonable prices. Jfow, Sir, it is a patent fact that Iwe Xytteltonians have suffered severely, particularly during the winter just closing, for want of firewood. We have had to pay most extravagant prices and been compelled to submit to severe privations for want of fuelalso. Perhaps it would be unjust to blame individuals for this state of things; but surely we are ourselves justly chargeable with want of prudence if we permit its continuance, when we have thousands of tons of firewood within an easy distance of the town, and requiring only a little union and determination under sensible management to bring it to our own doors, at a cost fifty per cent below what we have been lately charged. It is well known that wood is to be obtained on the Peninsula to any amount, at the mere cost of cutting and a nominal charge for a tim-ber-cutting licence. The men of Lyttelton have seen their wives and children shivering in damp, cheerless, windy houses—the mother /with; a most self-sacrificing spirit striving to eke out a miserable supply of fuel, mourning perhaps over the home-comforts she has left thousands of. miles away that she might share the struggle of her husband to raise his condition; and no adequate effort has as yet been made to bring the abundance of the Peninsula to supply the wants of the town. Look for a moment at facts. What is called a cord of wood, but in reality only tlireequarters of a cord, is being now charged*£2 10s. The cartage (when you are fortunate enough to get a carter to work for you) is charged 6s. if your residence is not within 300 yards from the beach. The wood will serve a small family four weeks, or at the rate of 14s. per week—about one-tliird of a labourer's income. Meat, as you have shewn, is very dear,. and house-rent is enormously high. Even parties whose position in society seems to demand that they should be free from unhallowed sordidness, are not ashamed to ask from ss. to. 10s. per week for a miserable cabin not good enough for a dog-kennel. Now, Why is ali this ? Our community is a young one, comparatively poor in the lack of two important elements of wealth—capital and knowledge of the fitnesses of things around them. They have in some measure been compelled to live " from hand to mouth," and the labours they have performed for the amelioration of their condition have too frequently been commenced without a I well understood purpose and been carried on without judgment. The people here have not yet found put the power of cooperation. Once shew them that by uniting their means and placing them under a wise direction they may obtain good dwellings, food and fuel, at reasonable rates, and the fault ■will then be their own if they submit to privations arising from the avarice and chicanery of monopolists. I fear to trespass further on your space, and will, with your permission, resume in your next number the consideration of the remedy I have suggested. PUBLICOLA.