HOW PRICES ARE ENGINEERED.

Taihape Daily Times, 25 August 1919, Page 4

HOW PRICES ARE ENGINEERED.

The «HlOll. W. F. Massey told a deputation representative of Wellington _Pl'ovincial District farmers that he had, ‘cl few days before arriving home, received a telegram I_;'rom Sir James Allen: the Acting-Prime Minister, stating that. -anrongst other produce in cold store in New Zealand there were 123,097 boxes of butter. With that quantity of but£ei"li‘c'old store on 30th J.un7e,'how ca-Tue -there to be a shortage in July 3 i\E*llqalirers were told that there‘ was plenty of butter in the country, the trouble was merely one of distribution. FWha-t _./wickcdnlpss and dishonesty is hid Beneath that word "‘distributi.on‘.3” While people have either to pay butter prices for veritable cart-grease, or go without. altogather,’ there are, on the authority of Sir James Allen to his chiet'., 123,097 boxes of butter lying in cold store. We need not. ask What the 'int.ent'i»on of this deception mats, it is too «o?bv’ious that it Was anothier effort at exploitaion that was nipped in the ‘buy by another Member of Cabinet-_ It can scarcely be claimed tlna.t_ the country had absorbed that quantity of butter in pne ~o.r]even two fmonth-s," because that would proclaim the impossible, for New Zealanders would be consuming more butter than the ‘Whole dairying industry produces, which’ is 880,000 boxes per annum. The fact remains that with 123,097 boxes of butter in cold store on 30th June, there is a butter shortage in July. The extremes to which the black art of exploitation and "legal robbery huas—7been carried is "indeed bewildering. on the 20th August Liberal Ministers threw in their tlortfolios andmarehed-out~of the Cabinet room, and the same day there was plenty of butter; the ‘butter shortage had ended. Applications‘ of storekeepers for butter brought butter from every point of th-e compass, and the attempted price-raising did not eventuate. Such wild efiorts at profiteering beggar one’s vocabulary to ‘justly stigmatise, and the only -gratifying aspect "is that even systematised legal swindling, like everything else, must have ‘its ending. The end of the butter projected swindle has come with the smash up of that which made it possible, the National Gnov-ernment.