MILK AT A PREMIUM.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 1045, 11 June 1883, Page 2

MILK AT A PREMIUM.

What the Ashburton | Factory has done. We (Timarn Herald ) casually referred ;a few days ago to the possibility of the price bf mutton rising to famine rates in New Zealand in consequence of the demand for export of frozen meat. From observations which we have since made in connection with another rising colonial industry, we find that this is by no means a fanciful supposition, ‘.The.first*effect of the establishment of dairy factories, it seems, is to leave so little milk available for local consumption that only , millionaires are , able to indulge in, it. ' Havirigoccasion : to : 'aSk for a'ctqPof tea at the refreshment rooms of the Ashburton railway station, one.day last .week, we were told we could have tea, but 'no milk, that hitherto plentiful article being now unobtainable hr consequence of the. .opening ; of the dairy factory. We were offered coffee “made, with milk ” —which sounded suspiciously of the. Swiss preparation—and we took it, and regretted it. We got well again, however/ and forgetting all about what we had been told, we visited the same place a few days, afterwards. We were about to order tea whep we;saw a map/with two children,; who asked if there was a little milk to spare. “ Oh yes, certainly,” replied the lady who presided over the tea bar, as she handed him a small jug, containing perhaps half a pint. The unsuspecting traveller, who looked rather a poor devil, —a clergyman in reduced circura stances or something of that sort—gave each of the children a little milk in a cup, certainly not a fouith of a pint altogether, and furtherregaled them with a penny bun a-piece. “What have I to pay?”he asked. “Two

shillings, Sir, thaxik you,” replied the lady, pleasantly. . “ Two sh ” but he checked the involuntary exclamation and only stared. “ Well; eighteenpence, then,” and the lady smilingly presented him with a shilling out of his. half-crown. We instantly performed a calculation in mental arithmetic. Assessing penny buns at threepence each, and estimating the quantity of milk consumed at half a pint—an 'extreme estimate —we rapidly came to the conclusion that the price' of milk at Ashburton, since the opening of the dairy factory, has gone_ up to four shillings a quart, or sixteen shillings a gallon ! We fled the spot, though we were dying fora cup of tea, and took refuge in the flowing bowl at the other end of the establishmentr We have always been an ardent advocate of local industries, but if this is the result of the opening of a dairy factory, we think people with-families ought to have; three month’s notice to clear out of the district, whenever one of those valuable institutions as about ta commence operations. -