Untitled

Shannon News, 7 February 1922, Page 2

Good cooks waste nothing. They prefer Sliarland’s Baking Powder because it ensures best results and is cheapest.

Mrs Butler is at present on a visit I to Wellington. | Mr Thomas, the local stationmaster, ? is at present on hi 6 annual leave, and f is visiting the south. Mr Murdoch is arranging for a Scotch concert to he held this month in aid of the Soldiers’ Memorial . The British Bacon Factory (Garrity and Son, Palmerston North), is now paying 4£d per. lb for bacon pigs. Trucking will take phtce at Shannon on Wednesday, reliable weights guaranteed. Mr Merwood met with a painful accident recently. The hook slipped while cutting flax and inflicted a nasty wounde in his leg, necessitating several stitches. Mr Merwood is progressing favourably. The Shannon School picnic will be held at Plimmerton on Saturday, February 25. Tokomaru joins in with the local school. Special trains have been arranged for, and a picture programme will be screened at the Maoriland Theatre on Monday, 13th inst,, in aid of the funds. One of the leading poultrymen of this district stated this morning that if wheat prices did not come down he could not carry on business next season. He considered the high price of feed was the main reason for so much foreign pulp coming into the country. Dear feed meant high-priced eggs, which gave an opening for the sale of cheap Chinese pulp, to the detriment of the poultry industry of this country.

A well known Wairarapa Romney breeder decided, at the Hastings ram fair, to feel the pulse of the market with his best pen, but buyers were nervous, and he only obtained moderate prices. Better prices were realised as the fair proceeded, and what he considered his worst pen, which was offered in the middle of the sale, fetched three guineas per head more than the top-notchers. According to a Wanganui farmer the present season has been highly favourable to the growth of blackberries and totally unfavourable to those engaged in the futile attempts to eradicate them. He considered that there would be some excellent berries for jam-making this year. "He then went on to state that an area of about 100 acres had been treated in the district with a patent spray with good results. When the spray was applied, at a cost of about £2 per acre, the .foliage immediately died and good burns resulted. He contended that this was the most effective means' of dealing with the pest that he had seen. It did not kill the plant outright, but neither did cutting, which cost over £5 per acre. A visitor to the Rotorua Chronicle office on Saturday was keen on knowing why the civil servants were making such a noise about the reduction of wages. “What about me?” he said, ami continued thus: “This time last year my cream sheque was £129 a month; this year it is £43; my wages and overhead expenses are just the same.” To the objection that he must have been coining money in the past, ue replied: “Not a bit of it; every penny I took I put back into the land. My manure bill was £l4O, apart from freight, cartage and labour; had I not done so I would have been unable to earn the cheque I do, and the country would be going back into fern, and so much production and employment would have been lost, including a lot of railway freight.” The farmers and producers are getting a cut that in many cases is their all, and the farmers and producers are those who back the civil servants’ pay cheque.

One of the sights of Hokitika is the big gold dredge set up to work the Rimu Flat, three miles from town hy an American company. The dredge, which is said to he the first of its class operated in New Zealand, and to he securing gold at the rate of 300 oz. a week, is worked electrically with power derived from the Kanieri Falls, enough water having been -harnessed not only to drive the machinery and light the dredge, hut also to supply the wants of Hokitika. A recent visitor was told that the company is so. satisfied with the results achieved That its representative has gone hack to America to supervise the construction of another dredge, twice the size of the one now at work, also a smaller auxiliary dredge. “Whilst one cannot but admire the enterprise of the Americans in tackling the Flats (says an exchange), the dredging operations are going to spoil practically for all time a fine hit of country hearing two or three feet of good soil.” I

The head of a mercantile establishment in the Wairarapa informed the Age that the predicted selling-up cf clients when prices of stock advanced sufficiently high to enable firms to recoup themselves for advances made was not likely to be realised, except in very rare eases where intervention with mortgages proved futile. He stated that the average man who was collecting interest from farms was amenable to reason, and he had succeeded in having thousands of pounds in interest remitted in order that farmers could carry on.