BREAD PRICES INCREASED.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3385, 14 January 1920, Page 4

BREAD PRICES INCREASED.

The next price-§oaring"in Taihape is I to ‘be experienced in bread, which is advertised to be incre.ased.to sixpence the two-pound leaf from the 19th instant. Thereis something not understandable in ‘dread prices. for in some parts of New Zevaland it is being sold at 4-1-d per two pound loaf. while in otherg the price is sixpence. So that as clear on understanding as possible may be obtained, we will -state the prices‘ that are being charged in the centres which cover «the whole Dominion. There are only two towns where" 6d is cll'ar-g----ed——Whangarei and Grisb-orne—and Taihape will be the third. Five Gen-1 tres———Auckla.nd, Wellington. Rotorua, l Wanganui, and B’lenheim-——charge s§£l; l in fifteen eentres—Palnlerston N.,l Masterton, Nelson, Timaru, Qlamaru,‘ Alexandra, Gore, Invercargill, Christ'church, Dunedin. Hamilton. Waihi, Napier, Dannevirke. New Plymouth—the price of the two pound loaf is sd, while in Greymouth and Ashburton the price is 4-1-d. We admit these prices constitute a conundrum we are not able to solve. The Board of Trade has been doing a bit of soaring recently, being translated into a body with the powers of -a Commission, but this does not appear to have improved its usefulness, or bestowed upon it: the ability to understand how the staff of life can be -sold last a profit in some places at 4-}-d while in others bakers complain of hardships in selling a.t (id. We -are forced -to realise th.a.t increase of dairying has pushed wheat production into Something eonlpal'*;Lti\w;~l_y negligible. for in 1914‘ some SOi)_fil(>l) bushels had to be imported to feed -our own people. It pays better to grow butter and cheese and buy wheat requirements from whence it is 'g‘l‘oWD much cheaper than we can grow it. ,There is a proposal to make an arbitrary price for W'llC'at grown here, a price that is out of comparison for ‘ What wheat can be had for from Australia, a process which-is economically ' fatal, and can only be the main excuse ‘for al‘bitl'al‘y price-fixing in cases not warranted by cost of production. If ‘it pays better to make nails than it does to make tin -tracks, let us make nails, and let. our land he usedto best advantage. It is economically a. great’ wrong to make people pay sixpence for bread that they should get for fourpenee. We do not think f«armers wish to make -themselves -a means of increasing the cost of living. which is the iessence of all industrial unrest. In bringing wheat from India and Australia, New Zealand only incurs a fraction of the risk-the millions of people. in Britain are for ever taking. Those millions live on imported wheat, Why cannot one milli.on here do so‘?,lt is a far more humans proposal -than increasing the loaf from fourpence to Sixpence, and prospectively more. to I enable wheat to be grown on land that would produce much more in valuo if put into pasturage. ‘The time. is not far distant. when it will pay to grow wheat, a.nd it will then be time to revert to wheat; the hand will be given a good rest. alld that will be reflected in crops -of wheat taken. ’_l‘he bread situation is not. second in importance to any'other, as it aifec-ts the very

stamina of the we-ilzing population, and as wheat-growing has gone down from having a million or two ‘bushels of surplus to export, to not growing enough to feed our own people by about a shortage of equal quantity, tinkering with arbitnary price-making should be abandoned, and -arrangements made with Australia for our annual requirements, as Britain has to do with her Dominions land with other nations. If bread prices, are to be unifoifmly raised to sixpence ‘per two pound loaf throughout the Dominion, millions of pounds will be taken -on-t of the pockets of the working population who are already in a state of unrest owing to ‘the difficulties of living.