A QUESTION OF PRINCIPLE.

North Otago Times, Volume CVII, Issue 17748, 17 March 1927, Page 4

A QUESTION OF PRINCIPLE.

It is interesting to note the almost hysterial joy pervading a section of the Press in connection with the defeat of the policy of the New Zealand Dairy Control Board. Yet the principle at stake is an important one to primary producers of every grade. Simply stated it is this: that the producer and manufacturer has an essential right to a voice in the disposal of the goods he manufacturefi. The defeat of the Dairy Control Board simply means that the producer is deprived of his rights as a salesman and that the middleman is the sole arbiter as to how the market shall be controlled. It was to defeat the machinations of the middlemen and to enable New Zealand products to be placed on the market at prices commensurate with their values, that the Dairy Board was set up. The stabilisation of qualities and the stabilisation of values was the object aimed at by the Board. Imediately the scheme was formulated it was met with opposition from two sets of interests: (1) a minority of producers who contended that grandfather's ways were good enough for them, and that they preferred the "open market," and (2) the whole of the interests concerned in thwarting the aims of the movement towards reform in the butter industry, The iirst line of attack was poiitical. Every effort was made to persuade. threaten ad icajole the members of the Legislature to kill the Dairy Control Bill as it passed. through Parliament. When this failed an etaborate Press propaganda was instituted, and as the agencies at work were fairly influential they soon obtained control of a Jarge number of uewspapers throughout the Dominion. At the same time inuuences were set to work at the British end, and amongst the newspapers in the Home Land with the result that an anti-control campaign came to fruition, with the further result that all the efforts of Mr Grounds and some of the more loyal to principle of his colleagues have been defeated. The butter trade goes back to the status quo, and the producers are once more competely at the mercy of the middlemen. The humour of it is that the protagonists of anti-control in the dairy business are seemingly stalwart champions of the rights of the wheat-growers to a voice in> Ihe marketing of cereals, and the loudest in their conderanation of the Government for seeming to favour the dumping of flour. This, of course, is pure opportunism, and must be taken for what it is worth. As far as we are iconcerned we very much regret that the victory has been awarded to the enemy through disloyalty in thc ranks of the farmers and the wrong-headedness of those who sided with the middlemen in their boycott of the producers.