The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE SATURDAY, AUGUST 10 I918. THE DRIED MILK CRAZE.

Taihape Daily Times, 10 August 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 10 1918. THE DRIED MILK CRAZE.

(With which is Incorporated The fajhape Post and Walraari-ao News).

From the highest to the lowest in the land, rich and poor, there is unbroken universal admission that profiteering is being practised on all sides; which ever way the unfortunate consumer looks there arises the vulture that tear away the food which is needed to rear his family in health, and filch the greater part of the clothing necessary for withstanding the climate now being experienced. The opportunities for extorting huge profits are being availed of to the utmost extreme, and. men seem to have lost their mental balance in feverishly inventing and discovering means of indefinitely increasing their exactions. Recent discussions in Wellington have dislosed the fact that in the multitude of words commonsense has lost its way. The mind’s eye of otherwise reasonable men has been given a glimpse of an obvious fallacy about profits said to be obtainable upon primary products, and these men are so intent upon grabbing the impossible that they have lost sight of the sane arguments and natural operations that would take them back to their normal understanding. Tliere is an elysium paved with millions "for the wool-grower and another for the dairyfarmer; instead of wool at fifteen pence wool men are going to receive fifty-one pence and in place of twenty pence for butter-fat dairymen are elated with the prospect of getting forty-two pence. We have already pointed out, and there is abundant conclusive evidence in Taranaki and elsewhere, that the value of land is governed to some degree of exactitude by what it will produce, or what can be earned from it. There is no variation to this rule, which amounts to a natural law,, in any case, the high value of land is the sequence of high prices of what is produced from it, and if land in Taranaki - is worth from eighty pounds to one hundred pounds an acre with butter-fat at twenty pence per pound, it will be worth more than double that value with butter-fat at forty-two pence a pound. The farmer paying the increased price of land and receiving the increased profits wnuld be far better off because he would earn the latter with the same outlay for labour that he made to earn the smaller profits. As a corollary of such a change all land in the Dominion would be turned to producing either wool or butter-fat, and it would continue to be so used until tile price of wheat was advanced to’ about twenty shillings a bushel, and all other products were advanced similarly in price. The value of sheep and dairy cattle would instantly be doubled, and all cattle and other grazed animals must go up in sympathy with the new level of land values, thereby making all meat double the price it is at present. Of course, while the wool and butter-fat millenium was being pursued, man, Avoman and child would have to subsist on those products or grow Avhatevor else they required for themselves; but the community must put up with such little inconveniencies, for, are not the riches of the country being added to so that everything else required could be imported? Unfortunately, it might be found that the wool and butter-fat madness had spread tc other countries, and then we should be thrown entirely on our own resources, meanwhile living entirely on glaxo and meat, and clothing ’ourselves with avool, It must not be forgotten however, that if means of subsistence are to be doubled in cost, wages must also undergo the doubling process, and, consequently, every■thing labour touches AA'ould be doubled in price also, and we should eventually emerge from the fit of profiteering madness to find that nobody was any the better off because everything

had doubled in price. The woolgrower would he no better off as'he would have to pay double for his land, sheep, and labour, and so it would be all round. What everyone should realise is that any sensational price offered is only and purely a temporary matter occasioned by the war. While the war lasts and for some time after hostilities cease there will be a strong demand for dried and preserved milk; the herds of the greater part of the .dairying world are depleted, in some placs almost wiped out. and it is from such countries the demand for the preserved article comes. Then, Germany and Other enemy countries cannot be denied whatever milk Allies and neutrals can supply them with for ■the upbringing of their children. But what those dairy companies who would rush into erecting glaxo factories should consider is, can the people in war-worn and devastated countries pay for milk in which the butter-fat costs forty-two pence per pound with all distributors, merchants and retailers’profits added thereto? If they can, then there is going to be a revolution in economic conditions that the world wots not of. The whole subject should have the most sane and careful consideration of those people who stand to lose most by any false step. We have heard the dried milk situation explained by more than one person who possesses knowledge from firsthand in America, and the only explanation with any , shadow of reasonableness about it is that by the H6w process of separating fat and water from the whole elements of milk where the milk is produced they can be re-assembled to supply the largest cities in the world wTOx what has all the appearances of being new, fresh milk, right down to its natural warmth Such reconstituted milk can be put through the separator similarly to milk just taken from the cow, but that docs not prove that big cities would pay the price for milk reflected in.- butter-fat at forty-two pence a pound, It should be understood to an extreme that ecqnqmic conditions absolutely prevent any great disparity arising in the .value of, primary .products, therefore the doubling of the price of any.,one; article must be reflected in the .value, of all others, in the animals from which they are produced, and in-the labour and land which produce them. With the new processes of evaporation and re-as-sembling the solied elements of milk, a permanent demand may arise, but certainly not at prices that would be so much higher.ithan milk can be produced for in the older countries. The present demand is abnormal, and Is the result of the war, therefore it is very problematical whether the factories for evaporating by the new process will be worked profitably when war conditions. no longer exist. We are inclined to the thought that butter and cheese produced in New Zealand are not ..taking count of the inroads that arq ; ,being made info their export trade, , ir The British Government is encouraging the production of margerine, which is such a perfect simile of butter that one can only be distinguished from tue other by experts. People are taking to the new margerine to such an extent that the yearly increase in its production is amounting to thousands of tons, and cur dairyfarmers have reason to be careful about leaving the substance for the shadow. It may be remember, ed that New Zealand flax a year or 'so ago was from sixty to seventy pounds a ton, while fo-day it will not fetch half that money. The high price was brought about by men who had started to corner, and the lower prices today are the result of the American Government stepping in and breaking down the corner, forcing stores of hemp suddenly on to the market; let us be quite sure that something of the kind is not happening to our dairying industry; sensational prices should at once arouse suspicion. Butler-fat permanently at anything like three shillings and sixpence a pound and ■wool at four shillings and threepence would revolutionise production and values of every known description to an almost impossible de'gfee.