GAROTTING METHODS.

North Otago Times, Volume CVII, Issue 17748, 11 March 1927, Page 4

GAROTTING METHODS.

The" efforts that have been made to strangle the New Zealand Dairy Coixtrol Board have so far not been snccessful. Heartened by the fact that there has been somewhat of a slump in the butter and cheese xnarkets at Home of late the reaction-' aries are redoubling their efforts. Thus in the cable news ,to-day comes some very cunning propaganda describing the Board's policy as1 the "biggest fiasco -ever known in trading circles." It is noteworthy that these views are not enunciated by men who stand disclosed, but by individuals — if indeed they are individuals — who are deseribed as "a prominent market authority" and " a leading authority." Those whP are at the back of this manipulationof the ' wires have the audacity to try and identify the Prime Minister with their propaganda. "If the New Zealand producers," they say, "had acted on Mr Coates' advice instead of attacking him politically for pointing out the unwisdom of the Board's policy they _ woixld now have been in a happier position." The njan who was behind the man who sent that cablegram knew that the Prime Minister was thinking furiously over the whole > problem and he was mightily afraid that if ; Mr Coates turned round and gave the inner history of the oppogition , to the Dairy Control Board some people, both in1 New Zealand axid in the Old Country, would have to hide their diminished heads. What the Prime Minister will say when ixe does eventnally speak Coates only knows. It will be one of the tests as to whether he is the strong man of the pre-election dodgers or whether he ,is not. At present his reply to insistent interrogators is: "I am unable to discuss the matter!" One thing is certain and that is that those who have made unto themselves a monopoly of the butter in-. dustry" and who have controlled and manipulated it for^' their own piirposes for these many years will fight to the last ditch rather than allow it to go out of their hands. Unfortunately .they have_ been assisted by the mole-like blindness of a section of .the producers, who rather than have butter and cheese controlled conirary to their way of thinking would assist to wreck the whole scheme, if indeed they have not already done so. The way in which an accommodating section of the New Zealand Press has heiped in frustrating the Board's activities for the producers' benefit is a reflection on either its sincerity or integrity. If the Dairy Control Board succeeds despite the opposition and obstruction to which it has been suhjected it will have registiered a notable achievement; if it faxls it will be because of the chuckle-headedness of a community which is not competent to think for itself, and which is the ready prey of the subtle propagandist.