The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16th, 1917. SENSATIONAL STOCK BUYING.

Taihape Daily Times, 16 November 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16th, 1917. SENSATIONAL STOCK BUYING.

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

If further evidence is wanted that the producers of this country are i selling their souls to the devil it will be found in a long telegram from Napier yesterday. It makes one wonder whether the people of this country when they sold land to some individuals actually sold with the land the right to the purchasers to sell the State into starvation and slavery. If there is only a modicum of real truth in the statements telegraphed it indicates that our repeatedly expressed fear of famine is nearer, much nearer the actual thing than, even we had anticipated. The Meat Trust have contracted with station-owners through- \ out the Hawke's Bay district, to sell j their bull calves for the next four | years; also heifer calves for a simi- ; lar period at varying rates. Prices for two months' old calves is eight pounds, and in some cases seven pounds are given for calves one week old Trust buyers are very active and these outrageously dishonest and damnably absurd conditions and prices are being embodied in contracts every week. The extraordinary statement is made that the Trust are not out after mutton, but they are obliged to take it in some cases to get the beef. Hawke's Bay farmers, so runs the have refused to contract for their beef to the fourth generation, unless the Trust takes their mutton at a penny a pound more than the Government fixed price—at a penny a pound above the export value, a penny a pound more than honestly conducted freezing works can afford to pay for it. We are enlightened as to how these sharks from foreign countries come in between the station-owner and our Government, but we are not told why they should be allowed to do so. It is stated that the trusts were known to get a penny more than anybody else for their mutton by refusing to sell their beef to the Government if tSe extra penny for mutton was not forthcoming. We are told that the tightening of this monopoly in Hawke's Bay is common talk. Here is a. case in which it M proved that Meat Trusts are superior to our laws and our Parliament; here is a body of aliens who ride rough-

shod over our laws and regulations, ana laugh while we squirm at the prospect of famine and starvation. We have a Parliament to watch and conserve the people's interest in the public estate while meat trusts ridicule the laws they make and alien vultures disregard everything in seizing toe food of the people, buying it up four years before it is produced. Our Government is allowing the increase of the land four years hence to be sold now that we know will be required to feed our children. Need one wonder that revolution is in the air. In Russia kings and aristocrats, land-owners and trusts are being wiped out in one bloody blow. If an uneducated people revolt at that which the sins of a Government per* mit, how much more are they likely to revolt in a country like this where education is compulsory. Greed is the curse of this stage of the world's development; the bloodiest war the world has experienced is the result of greed; . one nation of exploiters is jealous of occupying second place to another in its exploitation of the world, and it rushes into the bloodiest struggle ever known to take by cannon and sword that which it failed to get by lying and deception. If the authoritative statement we are discussing is true, the people of this land have been choused; been*led to seek security and consolation in a tool's paradise. The fixing of export values was little more than a trick, it trusts can extort a penny a pound from the- Government for their mutton by refusing to sen tiieir beef unless it is forthcoming. Yve were i.ea to understand that our Government on behalf of the Imperial Auknonties, requisitioned all this country's meat; is the Hawke's Bay telegram to let us see how we have been vLandea over to trust exploitation s\aae oemg cajoled into a false security? if our Government, or any utner government, will pay trusts a penny a pound more than what is understood to be the export value, uur farmers are being cheated, for under such circumstances there can be no fixed export value. The trust is giving seven pounds for week-old waives, and eigut pounds tor two-aiouth-oid calves, iu Hawkes Bay,

jU/xug ihem to me Lourxn geneiation,

-t is a pertinent .question to ask who . wid own ail the cattle worth, owning m Hawke's a'ay tour years trom now, vVe wonder, whether tuese trust-buy-ers are crossing the Rangitikei river into our own, Taihape, district? There is presumptive evidence in recent cat- : tie fairs' that a readying-up process : is in operation, and that in consequence, our station-owners will jump at a trust,.bait that is far less attractive' than that dangled in Hawke's Bay;, .that, they will think a modern Croesus has come among them, casting out gold regardless of ■ value received j and the glamour will be so intense that they will not realise that it is the old-time mess of pottage until their birthright is gone through a false appetite for gold, trust baits induced. We ask our farmers, more particularly, to consider this selling of their progeny four years before it is born; to figure out who the stock will belong to at the end of the four years. The Meat Trust will be supreme; farmers will only possess what the trust finds it essential to the continuance of their exploitation to let them have. What, is our Government going to do, what are farmers going to do, and above all, what are the masses of the people, who are certainly threatened with famine going to do? if past legislation is worse than valueless, in the false security it engendered and promulgated, what can we expect of our National Government. A Parliamentary Meat Trust Committee was set up and its value for the purpose for which it came into existence is shown by the bold bid by the Trust for the ownership and control of all the stock in the Dominion that is worth owning in four years from now. What are farmers' unions doing? What are Tradesmen's Associations, Chambers of Commerce, Boards of Trade, local governing bodies and efficiency boards doing? There 1 is, of a surety nothing efficient in this country excepting the methods of the Meat Trusts; so efficient are they that they are not affected by requisition values, regulations, or even Acts of Parliament; so efficient are the systems of this alien crowd that they can buy up the very food of the country to be produced four years hence. In a short article one can only touch the fringe of the question, but we appeal to our farmers to figure out their position four years from now, and . then make up their minds to avoid the trust bait and to support and build up their own institutions, so retaining control of their own stock, and their own markets for their own meat. The trust insinuat,ingly tells farmers it does not want their mutton particularly, an., yet it will pay a penny a pound more than the requisitioned export value to get

possession of progeny to the fourth generation. If a farmer demurs at the four years, he is nonchalantly deceived by a laugh and ready abandonment of the condition, but he falls an easy victim the next year, and so it is that the stock of this country will become the property of alien exploiters, unless we are sane enough to compel conditions to avert the calan ity.