The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, JUNE 11, 1917. THE ALLIES WANTING FOOD.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 11 June 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, JUNE 11, 1917. THE ALLIES WANTING FOOD.

(With which is incorporated The Tai-

hape Post and Waimarino News).

The extreme shortage of overseas shipping is already being reflected in our stock sales and in the maximum prices of butter allowed under Government regulations. Fortunately there is less compulsion for producers to sell at this season, were it otherwise the want of shipping would mdeed be a very serious matter. It is irksome enough as it is, more especially as there seems to be little guarantee of much immediate improvement. A clang of the trust bell reaches our producers through Mr. Bennett, general manager of the New Zealand Shipping Company, who is tolling c>ut the tally of stocks of frozen meat and other produce which are so enormous as to make his words reverberate with a strong sound of lower prices. The New Zealand Shipping Company is in the ring, or pool, or whatever the combination prefers to call it, and Mr. Bennett has without doubt been put up to speak for the combine, as there is nothing uncertain about what he says, excepting that which is of most concern to this country. He recounts our troubles, the huge accumulations of wheat, butter, cheese, hemp, tallow, and pelts, but he gives no indication of shipping improvement that is necessary to get them away; In fact, what he does say about shipping is distinctly depressing. The vessels his combination can, or will, allot to New Zealand are only sufficient to cope with the meat, butter and produce that is coming forward in this off season, and that, therefore, there is no probability of the congestion of storage being relieved. He shows, what we are evidently intended to regard as conclusive, that it is extremely improbable that any relief will be experienced for some time, for he impresses upon us the magnitude of the accumulated shipping task by telling us that to clear away the congestion would involve the use of forty steamers of average capacity, and he distinctly advises us to draw our own conclusions as to the extent and duration of the trouble that is looming up. There are already in store three million carcases of mutton, 180.T500 bales of wool, 250,000 boxes of butter, 130,000 crates of cheese, beside huge quantities of other produce. Unfortunately for the shipping combination side of the case, it cannot be said that the Army and Navy are not in extreme need of the meat and cheese encumbering our storage, for President Wilson has appealed to the American people to get food to Britain at the earliest moment possible owing to the dire need that exists. Britain and •her allies, he says, are suffering from a shortage of food, and he urges America to get supplies away at once in such quantities as will relieve the situation. This should be regarded as

a notification written across the heavens advising us that we may talk about after-war trade, but that the shipping combination is the power that is going to dictate to the world what after-war trade is to be like. Shipping is telling us plainly by its actions that we may keep our produce here while trust accumulations in America are used to feed our men that have gone to fight for their country. New Zealand farmers in the trenches are to be fed on American Trust Meat while their own meat is congesting storage in New Zealand. The trust is not waiting till after the war to let us know that the trade of the world is to be conducted according to their methods and liking. Have, President Wilson's words and the statements of the General Manager of the New Zealand Shipping. Company no meaning for us? President Wilson says the Allies are in extreme need of food and America's first effort must be to get food to Britain at the earliest possible moment; the New Zealand Shipping Manager tells us we have equal to 3,000,000 carcases of mutton congesting storage here that the shipping combination cannot or will not get away to where our sons are needing it to keep them in fighting trim. After all, what does the whole thing "indicate If it indicates anything it is that the only barrier to thje trust fixing and controlling the prices of our produce are the prices already fixed by the British Government, but the Crust has found a way of getting over that, for, while our soldiers" hunger they are leaving our prime wether mutton to clog our freezing works' storage while they take meat that is not required by our Army and Navy, and are supplementing this by supplies from their own stores in America. The trust laughs at our mere talk about after-war trade knowing that they already have New Zealand trade within the firm grip of their tentacles. How soon our producers forget what trust control means, it is well within ' the memory of many farmers that there was. a day when it paid better to boil their sheep down than- to sell at the price the trust offered.' There are some farmers who will.-hug the idea that the carting round, of legs of mutton at ninepence.and a shilling each was owing to quite a legitimate condition of the market and was not the result of trust fixing prices. It is also well within memory that large stationowners in the Wairarapa remonstrated with the ..trust and threatened that if something like a payable value was not -forthcoming all their surplus stock would be boiled down in preference to sending it to freezing works for exportation. The trust did not take these sheepfarnlers seriously and the boiling down works came into existence and were kept going till the trust was glad to offer payable prices and to pay the cost of the boiling down works being put out of operation. These station-owners benefited the producers of this country incalculably by keeping up stock values and, incidentally, the value of land. They saw, without any reminder from newspapers, that ruin was ahead if they Hid not entrench against the growing strength of trust methods, but to-day, farmers fail to see anything detrimental to our industries in our storage being congested with wool, butter aricT cheese, while the shipping combine is allowed to feed our soldiers from their freezing works in America. This is a blow at our producing industries which, from the past and present attitude of many of cur farmers must spell a retrogression almost, if not quite, amounting to ruin. There is no inkling of pessimism in what is here stated, for an instance is quoted in -w-hlch a trust, whose power was infinitesimal compared with that of the Trust which is operating to-day, was able to fix prices at just what it pleased, and it went so far as to fix them at such a level that well-known shcepfarmers found it more profitable to boil their fat and surplus stock down than to sell it for freezing. These sheepfarmers beat the trust methods in those days lust because the trust did not control the shipping. To-day, our produce is left to congest our works and that will be the course followed in the future, whether our "products are in the form of frozen meat, or what results from boiling down. New Zealand farmers are now entirely in the hands of the shipping combination and their produce will be taken to market when it pleases the combino. regardless of how disastrously it.may afl'eet them.