OUR DAILY BREAD. The Dear Flour Question.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 264, 22 July 1905, Page 6

OUR DAILY BREAD. The Dear Flour Question.

BREAD is cheaper in Australia than it is m New Zealand. This is probably because wheat is dearer in Australia than, it is in New Zealand. Or, perhaps, it is because of the Southern Flour Trust. The man who drinks champagne isn't worrying because beer goes up a penny a quart, and the M.H.R. who is wealthy enough not to worry whether bread is 2£d or 3£d a loaf is therefore entitled to all the credit he can gather for trying to get it reduced for th© man to whom cheapness is a consideration. • • • It is not quite apparent whether politicians who discussed the cheap loaf question in the House the other day were actuated by love for the bread eater, or hate for the milling combine, but it is thought the latter, seeing that the election looms. Australians make cheap flour from dear wheat. If the Australians therefore could get cheap flour into New Zealand free of duty, the loaf would go down — so would the Trust. But, perhaps the Trust would make cheap flour, too, in order to> keep on existing. So that the curative properties of an admission of free flour would appear to be excellent. • • • Then, someone spoke about the probable injury to the New Zealand farmer by permitting free wheat to come in. Evidently, the margin of profit to New Zealand farmers must be heavier than to the Australian farmer to satisfy the former, for if cousin Cornstalk exported free wheat I—which1 — which is dearer over there — into New Zealand at Australian prices, the New Zealand farmer could still sell his. own product cheaper than the Australian. In other words, the Australian, with freight to pay, couldn't payably compete, and it wouldn't ruin New Zealand farmers to let Australian gram come in free. * • ■♦ Bread is dearer in New Zealand than m any other country m the world. The majority can afford to pay the big price. The minority can't. Probably, among the minority are those Wellington people whom the Ladies' Christian Associar tion are concerned about. Read : "The committee has a number of people on its hands 1 who are unable even to provide food for their own families, and are dependent on benevolent people for clothing." • * Do you think it would be any advantage to such people if the Flour Trust was smashed, or Australian

flour admitted free? Or do you think it would be an. injustice to the farmers of New Zealand, many of whom, have been having the very best time they ever experienced in the history of the colony? Inordinate profit made out of the food supply of a people is as kind as robbing a blind beggar, and any means taken to remedy the 'evil, even, if it were to annoy that august political assembly, the Farmers' Union, should be taken at once. Maybe the cry of "cheap loaf" is an electioneering dodge, but the man who can make the cheap loaf a reality is deserving of all the honour he can get at an election. And the man who bursts up any kind of trust is worth all the thanks that can be heaped on him.