EGG CIRCLES DEFENDED

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8348, 7 February 1913, Page 2

EGG CIRCLES DEFENDED

Ml- H. - Leper writes: Your correspondent "Kangiuru” pricking tiie co-opera-tive “bubble” forcibly reminds one of tne lute Don Quixote Knight X)e La Mancha pricking windmills most gallantly and indenting his cranium ihstead. Perhaps your correspondent does not know that it is easier to prick the bubble of “selfsufficiency'' than, that of co-operation. That statement of "Levin supplying the bulk of Wellington’s eggs,” contained in cutting sent by this writer, was one of those slips of the pen, or mistakes, which even a schoolboy of average intelligence could at once detect as such. That, however, had little to do with the main point at issue, vis.: The unsatisfactory state of Wellington’s market. This can be proved. livery new co-operative concern has to fight its way against the bitterest opposition, and the egg circles are no exception. “Rangiuru” takes the trouble of sending a special note emphasising the ignorance of egg: circle leaders on the strength of an inconsequential and quite evident slip, yet he commits the same offence by understating Levin’s supply as only 3 per'cent, of the whole. This would' mean that during October Wellington absorbs fifty thousand dozen weekly. It would mean ten eggs weekly for every man, woman and baby, wKToh is absorb. It was too bad leaving Otaki townlet out of count. Does not Otaki also send its' tiny rivulet down into the sea ? Of course it does I Farmers and small men generally supply 85 per cent. of . the whole, poultry farmers only 15 per cent. This means that if the former are unorganised the latter must suffer. Egg circles are indispensable, and a little opposition will do them good. We want genius, especially the genius organiser, to come and help. Owing to the law of “industrial pressure” all intelligent producers \and workers nowadays come together In industrial bodies. If these ato crude and imperfect they criticise and amend or demolish and rebuild, knowing that all this cannot he done in a day. They do not remain outside to decry and shirk their duty. Organisation overcomes difficulties. Laissez Faire is a dismal and exploded science in 1913. Californw Citrus Fruit Co-op, Societies have turned an insignificant industry into vast millions of wealth to the discomfiture of the Impossibillsts. Middlemen cannot more help opposing these new concerns than they can help the law of gravitation, nor can we help resisting. It is the law of the trust or collective industry replacing old tin-pot laws. Middlemen can afford to smile at "Rangiuru." They have read the industrial clock, and know that the future is on. the lap of organisation, and they act accordingly. Systematic organisation would widen the scope for a larger number of "reducers, true, but superfluous production would automatically check itself as it does now. As for people catching the chick-fever, notbing can be done until the microbe is discovered. We want education of producers, better and cleaner eggs, export, uniform work and supply, up-to-date scientific experiments, and more profit. Let us keep well in. mind Mr rr ßangiuru” that a proud peacock and one or two turkey cocks swaggering magnificently around the backyard do not make a poultry farm any more than a dozen eelf-oeiitred poultrymen make the poultry industry. After hearing of the ignorance of egg circle leaders and “Rangiuru's” hint that they should study economics, this writer sat back gentlv in expectation of a treat from our Otaki Mentor, but alas I “The cel'tain stern law of supply and demand” carries a hundred years of dust on its ■ back. Stephenson’s engine, ‘‘the Rocket,” a triumph of engineering in its day, appears like a coffee grinder in 1913. We want something up-to-date. We have scores of combines in this country acting in defiance of any supply or of any demand. They are a' law unto themselves. Only as an organised body can we deal with them on anything like equal terms, or survive their onslaught. The separated unit on his dignity is a back number, soon to bo as extinct as the Dodo.