The Daily News. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1903. MILKING ON SHARES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXV, Issue 245, 14 November 1903, Page 2

The Daily News. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1903. MILKING ON SHARES.

Every new industry brings with it its own difficulties, and it has now become evident that the dairy indus l try is not exempt from the common lot. When a dairy farmer desires to take a rest and ease off his arduous duties, his first idea is to look out for someone to " milk on shares." - He usually has no difficulty in finding plenty of men to take over his herd on shares, tr» terns in each case varying considerably. And now the difficulty has commenced, and experience has proved throughout the colony the truth of the maxim that "a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client." To draw up a milking agreement which wilt cover prospectively all "the difficulties that are likely to arise between the owner and the milker, is a difficult thing which taxes the ingenuity of a most practised lawyer. In most cases up to the present time both parties to the agreement desire to avoid tike expense of professional assistance, and cobble up between them some sert of document, which results in a lawsuit of a kind which costs tenfold more than the lawyer's fee, which was in the first instance avoided. From the Waikato where, at Hamilton, a hotly contested case in which damages were claimed at £2OO has just been fought to a finish, to the Taieri and Mataura, in the South Island, to say nothing of Taranoki, there have been a score of cases determined on the various clauses of agreements ignorantly conceived and stupidly compiled. At present the very fundamental notions of the relation in which owner and milker stand to each other are quite undetermined. In some cases they o» cupy the position of master and servant- in some that of contrtatator and contractee, in some a Uimited partnership, and in some a full partnership exists. The relationship is, of course, determined in each case by the actual words used in the agreement, but we think we are justified in saying that the average farmer who sets himself to write out a milking agreement has no idea of what position he proposes to occupy. Neither of the parties have any distinct knowledge of what they are undertaking, only a .hazy notion that the milker is to have 30, 40, or 50 per cent, of the milk cheques and prbl<(a l fctlyhalf the calves and pigs. In almost every agreement that has come before the law courts as far as we have seen, the Question of who Is to repair the fences is not even touched upon, while in the Waikato case we have mentioned, th» portion of the farm allotted to the milk cows was quite forgotten to be set out. , Where this last matter has been attended to, the right of the owner over the allotted portion, if any, is loft out. This last is a frequent source of dispute, since the owner, especially when no hands over tho whole of his farm to the milker, forgets to stipulate for the necessary requirements of his horses, his sheep and his store cattle. The milker, on the other hand, naturally resents the desire of the owner to run his sheep among the milkers, or when hj» finds 'his milk cows straying on the public road, saj's it is not his business to repair the fences for the owner. On the other hand, the quesof When the milk cows are ex- ', pectcd to calve is almost certainly left out of tho agreement. The owner contracts to supply 100 cows, and the milker naturally demands that they should be on the ground from i tho first day on which the contract commences. We have only touched on a few of the many difficulties which confront the compiler of a. milking agreement, and wo cannot hope in tho space of a short article to explain to a layman how the agreement should be drawn up without the assistance of a lawyer. ,At the present time we can only suggest that professional assistance al- ' ways should be employed, since it is . cheaper to obtain such assistance at the beginning of a case rather than i at tho end. '