Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 1908. OUR DISTRICT.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43343, 27 June 1908, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News.

SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 1908. OUR DISTRICT.

Jhis above all—to thine oion self be true , And xt mutt follow, at the night the day Thou canal not then be false to any man Shakespeare.

PAST, PRESENT, & FUTURE.

(Written specially for the Te Aroma News.) THE DAIRYMAN’S PRIDE. PART 11. [A.B. —Copyright.] ‘‘ And how much butter do you export to London annually ?” I asked. “ Last season about 150 tons.” was the answer, “ out of the Is 9 tons manufactured, and the rest was sold locally.” If genius in general is to be described aa' an infinite capacity of taking pains, industrial genius merits that definition in a supreme sense. The journey to London is a long one. The golden treasure must needs be secured against the dreadful attacks of that insidious foe, mould. I saw the 561 b. cases, all carefully double-lined with snowy white parchment, and outside that again, the inside of the cases was waxed, so as to render the butter absolutely secure. Needless to say the butter is put on the London market in the winter. It is despatched from Auckland once a fortnight. To give

an idea of the wealth which is being brought into the district by means ; of this cimpany alone, we may state that, during November, December, and January last, over two thousand pounds sterling was distributed monthly among the one hundred and ten suppliers. To show the rapidity with which the business is

growing one need only quote the excess of butter manufactured in 1907, over the manufacture for 1904, which was 421,7921b5, as against 298,3321bs As we have somewhere else stated, this is only the fifth season of the company’s operations, and al-

ready five thousand of the six thousand pounds of the company’s initial indebtedness is paid off. Certainly the soundness of the co-operative basis as a working principle in the development of the Dominion’s future has here a good exponent. One feels inclined to quote the words of the well-known economist, Francis A. Walker, he says, “ The time may come in the

develepment of the human race, through the education and elevation of the masses, when a body of labourers, joined together for the purpose of co-operative production, will give to their industrial enterprises as intelligent a direction, as close a supervision, as rigid a discipline, as energetic an impulse, as the present successful man of business gives to the enterprises on which his fortunes and his reputation are staked.” In other

words, when you have an instance of educated, .industrious, enterprising dairy-farmers adopting and putting into practice a principle, which an illiterate and unenlightened body of labourers could not possibly have the power thoroughly to apply, the case for co-operation is established. . Added to this the great facilities for perfect competition, that is to say the facilities to find the highest market for produce, which our present day freezing and shipping agencies afford, and taking into account the fact that no one in the Dominion has any excuse for growing up uneducated and unenlightened, it appears impossible to set bounds to the future of cooperative enterprise. All of which is of course merely by the way. All the while, as one passed about from office to weighing-in loft, from weighing-in loft to cooling-chamber,

one heard the throb, throbbing of the machinery. The very tankards are elevated from the suppliers’ carts to the loft, and tipped into the weighing-in vat, and weighed or measured back again (that is to say the skim milk) by means of machinery. The quantity of butterfat which each supplier contributes is ascertained by the same unerring power, and each one receives payment on that basis, precisely according to the quantity of butterfat, do more no less. How much better than in the old days when it was apt to be the leavings for the last man in the matter of the skim milk, and when the butter-fat had to be averaged. “ What becomes of the whey ?” I enquired, for memories of English dairies, in the heart of cuckoo haunted fields, suggested that whey was an item to be considered.

“We sell it by contract, for feeding pigs,” was the reply. Precisely! The bacon factory is first cousin to the butter factory, with the unsuspecting porker as the means of transmitting the whey into bacon and hams.

No wonder one hears the same statement wherever onp goes It is the creameries that have made the country.” It is-, undoubtedly the creameries. They are to the small farmer what the Bank of England is to the holder of bullion. Here the dairyman may bring the unminted gold of his butter-fat and know that it will be bought from him without ado, and in any quantity, and in exchange for his yellow treasure he receives coin of the realm, wherewith to purchase peed, stock, and implements, by means of which he can still further develop his land. The butter factory is the dairy farmers mint, and carries on its function by curious and magic appliances, chief among which and long to be remembered, are those chilling, snake-like ammonia coils, with their baffling secret of keeping everything as cold as it ought to be kept even in the tui haunted heats of a New Zealand midsummer.