THE DAIRY POOL.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 May 1922, Page 7

THE DAIRY POOL.

THE PROPOSALS CRITICISED. Writes Mr. Willie J. Freeth, of Pukearuhe:—The proposed butter pool has been accepted by both town and country as the one and only solution to this important question. It is, therefore, with some little temerity that I write this letter in opposition to their views. I must say that Saturday’s meeting appeared to me to be absolutely the most inconsistent meeting I have ever attended. Mr. Goodfellow being the most important speaker of the day, let us follow him a little way. He arrives l in New York to negotiate the sale of five thousand lons of butter. After much negotiation, he agrees to sell at Is 11 2-22d —a million pounds deal. He makes every known arrangement, diverts the steamers, arranges insurance, etc., but leaves one stipulation, and that is he will not give the final “yes” until he reaches London. Well, he reached London safely, but on his way over he must have thought of the most important matter in a deal of this description, and that is the cash, so he cabled back, accepting the offer, but trying to work in an extra clause, namely, the agents in New York to place irrevocable credits in the bank.

In the meantime, smart Australian agents, seeing what was coming, caibled over, offering Australian butter at 150 s c.i.f., so smash was that little deal, and I wonder how many Waikato farmers got hit in the back-wash! Well, Mr. Goodfellow was in London with the backing of one-third of the N.-Z. •butter output, evidently with a free hand, for he told us that he said his price for his butter was nothing under 200 s, and he was going to hold the market. Notwithstanding that he knew that Australian agents were flooding the markets with offers of 150 s c.i.f. Well, he soon found that Tooley Street people had all the brains, and beat him badly, and it was intensely amusing to hear him say: “Gentlemen, the irony of the thing is that the men who smash the market are the ones who show the best returns, for the more I lowered my price the more they came down, and they were selling, don’t forget.” Yet that meeting applauded this Waikato champion, and could not see that the smart men who were handling their goods against him were meeting the world’s competition and getting their stuff off, and he said: “Had I had twothirds of the N.Z. butter instead of onethird, I could have held,” and yet the British Government, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer at their backs, and a million boxes of butter on their hands, with a ce,rtain loss of three to four millions facing them could not hold the market up, so I say “What chance!” Mr. Goodfellow said, in conclusion, that he found Tooley Street had thq brains, they had the capital, they had. the business, and 1 could only conclude that when he left London they still had the cash, they had the brains, they had the business, and when Mr. Goodfellow arrived in Auckland he found that the other factories outside the big amalgamation had nipped up liis business. »So he immediately started to work and smashed prices to regain his business, the very thing he had so strenuously condemned throughout the meeting as being done by the English houses. Now, there are other aspects of the question I should like to mention. One was the way Mr. Morton and Mr. Brash so repeatedly stressed the point that the Tooley Street connection was in no way to be interfered with. Mr. Goodfellow got up and quoted the point that butter buyers were like horse dealers, and yet the meeting did not notice the smile on Mr. J. R. Corrigan’s face (who was evidently specially brought up from Hawera to dominate the meeting), and who, from sale reports, is the largest horse dealer in Taranaki; and then Mr. Marx, also a convert, had his usual say. Was it not Mr. Marx who bought some bush for the Box Company? “And, gentlemen,” he said, “there is enough timber to last our children’s children for I don’t know how many generations.” I don’t know about the timber, but rather fancy the payments will see a good many generations of milkers through; but, joking aside, 1 will say this, the last few years the leaders of the dairy industry have had something like six hundred thousand pounds to handle in co-operative companies, and to-day not one single pound of this money is paying a dividend, yet it is proposed to raise another million and have another go. You farmers, tot up this little sum: Is 4d per lb of butter-fat for ten years of your milk cheques. Not a bad little pile. I say, put it in the bank, and let Tooley Street do the business. You are proposing to find -£lOO,OOO per year to remedy evils that a £5OOO per year man would do if you got the right one. Personally I don’t see him on the horizon this way.