The Taihape Daily Times FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29th, 1916. IS IT THE MILKMAN?

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 201, 29 September 1916, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29th, 1916. IS IT THE MILKMAN?

AND WAIMAETNO ADVOCATE (With which is incorporated The Tal hape Post and Waimarino News.)

If Courts of Law have established anything by the consistency of their judgments, convictions and punishments, it is that purveyors of milk are among the worst prevaricators and biggest frauds on earth. B'y the invariable result of a charge against a milkman, the public would be justified in regarding him as one who needed to be kept under very strict surveillance, for as sure as he is caught by the wily inspector, so sure does the Court inflict a fairly heavy fine. In fact, toe Court has no alternative; the law says the Magistrate must, and he does it. It would, under these circumstances, have simplified matters, and saved the Court from the indignity of having to be told what to do by the Inspector, if the sample of milk was analysed, and with the analysis in his pocket the Inspector went straight to the milkman and said, you are fined five pounds, and have straightway collected the money, thus eliminating a good deal of red tape, which all costs money, and have relieved the Magistrate of doing as he is told, whether it is in accordance with his judicial views or not, or, in other words, of doing the dirty work of the whole transaction. When a man has put in about half a century on this peskily run earth, he has naturally come into contact with a good many milkmen, as they are called; and despite the consistent conviction and the invariable fine, he will have found that £he milkman is just about as bad as most other people and, cer-

tainly, not averagely worse. If anything, he has shown up a bit better than a good many others; but for that one sin which inspectors, Courts and fines cannot break him of, he is quite a respectable member of the community he moves in. Whether it is an acquired or an hereditary mania it is not easy to determine, but, it seems, he will water his milk. These are tne views the majority of people have hitherto had about their milkmen, but a week or two ago Mr. Loughnan, in the Taihape Magistrate’s Court, somewhat turned all these preconceived notions topsy-turvy. His contentions, which had an unmistakeable ring of truth in them, dubbed the law an ass, and he went on to prove that it didn't know what it was talking about, or, it was, with knowledge, persisting in perpetuating one of the most pesky forms of persecution any class of citizen could be subjected to. Mr Loughnaira arguments and scientific facts, however, fell on the Court like water in the milk, it made no difference in the bill, it was a case of pay up or go to gaol. Now, there is a very serious aspect to all this; we are satisfied beyond all doubt that Mr Loughnan was substantially correct in what he urged, and we have since learned that in Britain and .other countries, where more enlightened law making and administration prevails, milkmen are no longer punished for their milk not having an arbitrarily fixed standard or solids. The Court'of Kings Bench has decreed that men selling milk with less than the legally fixed standard of solids may be absolutely innocent of adding water. The High Court says, theory in milk must give way to practice; that things must be judged as they are, and not as they appear to the mind of the theorist. In New Zealand, one of the greatest authorities, one who has spent almost a lifetime in research, Mr Primrose McConnell, says, “Scores of the picked cows of this country sent to shows, have yielded milk below the standard in quality.” He says there is no known method whereby a cow can be made to steadily yield good milk, though she may do so in nine cases out of ten. Of course, watery milk is strong presumptive evidence of guilt, but if, as Mr Loughnan urged, there is a reliable test, one that definitely determines whether belovy standard milk is caused by natural poorness or by the artificial addition of water, the present law is mischievous, and should be amended. ,We have no hesitation in say ing that a man who deliberately adds anything unlawfully to his milk should not only be fined, but the everlasting stigma of fraud should be put upon him by removing his name from the category of lawful milk vendors. Nevertheless, what is an injury to tne individual is an injury to the community, and the inherent spirit of British justice will be distinctly against the continuance of a punishment, that is proved may be nothing short of persecution.