CORRESPONDENCE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 297, 10 May 1911, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE

THE SIGN OF THE TIMES. To the Editor. » Sir, — In teaching our children I fear we are making a big mess of the whole thing. Moulding clay is but another form of making mud pies. Mr. T. E. Taylor, M.P., has protested against forcing drawing down the throats of the coming generation, when it was never less needed. The camera has been given with the suggestion, "don't waste time at this any longer." It is no use getting teachers to teach the Taranaki youngsters "how many teats a cow has.' They will have horns growing out of their foreheads next generation. In fact, they should take their thoughts away from the everlasting cow, for it is certain they can say boo to a goose. It may make their" mothers afraid they are becoming too bovine.—l am, etc.,

THE PRICE OF FRUIT. To the Editor. Sir, —Your sub-leader in to-day's issue under the above heading, so bristles with inaccuracies as to need some comment. There are popularly supposed to be two sides to most questions, and it is hardly fair that the fruit dealers oi New Plymouth should be judged and found wanting on the hearsay evidence of a reporter in Christchurch, who is dealing with conditions in that city, or that you should make the statement that ''the conditions in Christchurch, so far as the buyer is concerned, are the conditions which exist elsewhere." F»r the latter word wc may in this -instance substitute "New Plymouth," for you proceed to prove to your own satisfaction that fruit is bought here cheap and sold at an exorbitant profit. To do this you start with a misconception, and naturally the logical conclusion is an erroneous one. Your Christchurch reporter, whose statement of his investigations you accept as gospel, makes some very inaccurate statements. Ho takes apples for his test case. The president of the New Zealand FruitGrowers' Association has, he says, told him that the Christchurch dealers are selling applies supplied to them by his firm at 2 I / 2 d for fid, and deduces'from this statement that the dealers aire making an excessive profit of 3y 2 d on these apples. Now, I have been assured by a gentleman who has just come up from Christchurch and who knows what he is speaking about, that the only apples selling to-day at Od per 11). in Christchurch are Tasmanian Ribston ''ippins, which cost the dealers a good deal in advance of 2y»d wholesale, and that the best New Zealand varieties are to be bought in all the shops at 4d per lb. This puts. «• different complexion on affairs, for instead of 3y 2 d margin for bad fruit, rents, turn of scales, bags and profit, we. have only ly>d—a rate i no one can call excessive. This same gentleman tells me that he bought bananas at eight, for one shilling, which on being weighed averaged 3d per lb. Here in New Plymouth they are sold at four and five pounds a .shilling. Here also the best eating apples can be bought all over the town at 3d to 4d per lb. A prominent dealer told me to-day that, he ha.d not charged 6d a lb. for apples this season., O'he or two dealers are, I believe., charging the. advanced price for picked fruit, but the market price is 4d per lb. for the best fruit obtainable, and. not Gd as you intimate. Oranges up to the last, week have sold at one shilling pet dozen. These prices are well within the reach of anyone, and certainly do not warrant your assertion that'fruit'here is a luxury for the rich and out of the reach of the average head of a family. As a matter of fact, it is those latter people who buy most of the fruit-f-our best customers are not the wealthy, class by any means. Your reporter comes' intd the auction room when a big consignment of fruit is to be sold, -and flnfls,' fcay, plums selling at Is fid per case hind peaches at 2s. Next' day a paragraph appears in your paper drawing attention to the price of plums and peatfhes Wholesale alid retail. Next week the prices go to normal, 4s to 6s, say. hut no'remark is made about prices inthis instaneer although the price retail is' not advanced. The dealers try and strike: ; a fair average. The fruit dealer is : human. He has, perhaps, a wif« and children; even perhaps he has as much right to live as anyone else. He never makes enough to retire on, and he cannot build grand houses, but surely he is of some use to the community, you are forced to the conclusion that his extermination is the only hoper of improved conditions, he would- ask for a fair trial on the merits of his ease, and he most decidedly objects; to. being snuffed out because a few unreasonable individuals wish to deny him a fair profit on his goods.— I am, etc.,.- . M. d. W.

[No one l 'will' deny the fruiterer a fair mntfgifi of> profit." Ho is entitled to it just as any. other business man. But the fruiterer' is "not always satisfied wifli a fair margin. We have in our mind's ere instance* where the fruiterers wanted 100' and even 1.10 per cent, on wholesale cost. They seemed to overlook ■ the fact that if "they offered the fruit at a reasonable profit'the increased sales resulting would more than compensate them for cutting down the margin. The auctioneer is on a different wicket. He sells oh a commission, to which, of course,' he is entitled.—Ed.]