The Taihape Daily Times. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1917 DISCRIMINATION IN CRIME.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 10 September 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1917 DISCRIMINATION IN CRIME.

AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE (With which is incorporated The Taihape Post and Waimarino News).

If an inherently perverse specimen of humanity lies to the officers of our recruiting system and/so gets a few months’ exemption from military service the law says he deserves three months in gaol and he, of course, gets it. Two children, in England, were caught hiding three or four ounces of bread for a future feast, tre laws says they must not do it, and they were accordingly pounced upon by the police; all the majesty of the law was invoked upon them, they were brought before the cou,rt and were fined five shillings each. Even in the case of little children the law punishes wrong-doers. A case has been elucidated in the New Zealand Parliament, during the last few days, of certain meat companies having improperly, unfairly, dishonestly turned to their own use certain ships that were set apart to be freighted with the meat required by our Zealand lads in the trenches, by the British fighting men and those who are attending to the maimed and b,roken, and these ships were loaded up with, to use a Member of Parliament’s words old bulls, stags, old and old fat ewes, a promiscuous lot, including a larger quantity of lamb. A great outcry is being made about the congestion of cold storage, and this we find, through the question coming before Parliament, is the class of meat that is causing the congestion. It is meat that certain companies are buying here at the lowest price, dishonestly purloining space in ships to take it to Britain, where they are selling it at a profit of f|rom cightpence to tenpence a pound to those who are winning the war, for us in the munition factories and . deep down in the mines of Great Britain. The Prime Minister has admitted from his place in the House that certain meat companies stole the shipping space in these particular ships for their congesting low class meat that the British Government would not touch for the army, to the disadvantage of meat producers here and the danger of food shortage in France and other fronts where our men are fighting. We compare this callously con-

temptible proceeding with the lie of the man who got a little further time from military service, and more particularly with the sin. of the two children who were .storing a few ounces of b,read to assuage a hunger they knew would shortly fall upon them. What is the National Government going to do with the purloiner of ships? The National Government winks the other eye while tea thousand ton vessels are annexed, is it any wonder that the people are being robbed from end to end of the country by profiteering? The Board of Trade, that seems to have been instituted to protect profiteering says definitely, there is no profiteering, while week by week we find cases being ventilated in Parliament, which Ministers undertake to have stopped. If such cases had gone before the Board of Trade, that body would doubtlessly have found that it was all perfectly in order, that the profiteers were only doing what they were quite entitled to, namely, get the biggest profits they could. What is of immediate importance to this producing district is that the Government has just looked upon the purloining proclivities of dishonourable meat companies in improperly seizing tTie whole of the meat freightage of certain ships as a commendably smart piece of business. W e a,re assuming that no such action as that taken against the children is going to result, therefore we have no other alternative than to conclude that what appears to us an inhuman and terrible crime is being condoned by the Ministry. Our producers may be sure that if this purloining of shipping space is not going to be punished by law that it will continue. Ar e the Meat Trust Meat Works already too powerful for our National Government or are we to assume that its members are willing victims? It is utter nonsense to tell the producers that whole ships have been taken without the knowledge of the authorities; it is an insult to the intelligence of every man in this Dominion. We are daily having the most bare-faced untruths broadcasted from certain members of the National Ministry, and if the people are going to continue taking no notice they will soon have occasion to call out God help this country. With the high cost of living money must come back to New Zealand for produce shipped. When meat trusts commandeer our ships to take away their stags and old fat ewes the bulk of the money goes to other countries. Let us tell the working classes that no man is so deeply affected by a diversion of money to other countries than they are. It is of far mor e importance to them than to the man who produces the stock, these men get the requisitioned price, but ther e are huge intermediate sums they do not got, the sums that make millionaires of members of meat trusts who do not produce a single | pound of meat, but' who live vulture- j like on what others produce in its tran- j sit to the consumer. This question is j fraught with so much that should concern the worker as to warrant workers instituting vigilance committees all over this Dominion to collect and collate evidences of acts of profiteering, and more particularly, because they are not so self-evident, of acts that can only lead to profiteering. Workers are striking and petitioning, fuming and suffering because of prevailing conditions, yet they do nothing to get at the heart of their trouble. Let them categorise the various growers of produce, learn which loyally support everything -tending to the progress of the country, and they will be surprised at the huge army of human cuckoo, nestrobbers and nest-foullers, who care nothing for New Zealand or the people that constitute its bona fide population. They will also find that there are those in and out of Parliament who will treacherously pass them over to meat trusts and other profiteering institutions. We sincerely trust that our j primary will not take an- j other step towards selling themselves ! to the trust. They have gone to a very dangerous turning on th e road in that direction, but if is not yet too late to follow a course that does not lead to suicide. We have our own freezing works let us not leave them till we have filled up the works of our most mortal enemy. Let us fill up our own works to their very fullest capacity with the pink of our produce, earning, for our district a name that will ensure the highest prices for our stock for all time, whether it is sold in our sale yards or to meat works. There are some loyal, patriotic farmers, who are striving in this direction; they are bettering the class of animal they breed every year; they ar e commencing to compel the notice of stock breeders in other localities and are consequently getting good prices for sheep for breeding purposes. We do not look with any suspicion on the sellmg of old fat ewes so long as they are merely giving way to a better class of animal, but we have cause to be alarmed when owing to the temptations offered by meat trusts our meat works are congested with ewe carcases that might much more profitably be bearing progeny. It is an acknowledged fact that ewes have been in store for a considerable time that should hav e been bearing,

and they would have gone on congesting the meat works of this province, if not of this district, were it not that a dishonest purloining of ships, enabled them to be got to Britain, while a better class of meat more urgently needed was left to deteriorate.