DAIRY PRODUCE POOL.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 May 1922, Page 7

DAIRY PRODUCE POOL.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —The rfecent contributions to your columns, per Mr. E. Maxwell, must have maae interesting reading to your many subscribers, and one almost wonders what is behind that gentleman's fervent championing of the Tooley Street cause?. It is indeed a shock to be told that we are all astray in our calculations as regards the methods of handling our dairy produce at Home; that we have no causa to be dissatisfied; that we get the uttermost farthing that our butter and cheese is worth; that our butter is never used in countless * tons to Wend and improve other English brands and thereby enridh many others than our own producers; that there is no need for active advertisentent by our producers themselves; that the Tooley Street merchants and others of that ilk .at Home are really a benevolent institution; and that the championship of our products should be left solely to them. Y’e gods, sir, what does Mr. Maxwell take the bulk of the New Zealand dairy farmers to be? - Fools? Yes, verily they have been in the past, and If they are prepared to sit down, as Mr. Maxwell would have us do, and be further fleeced, well, they deserve all they get. Mr. Maxwell would have us ignore the fact that it is Denmark’s superb organisation in the regulating of the disposal of her butter that has made very largely for the present successof her dairying industry, and this after making all allowance for the facts that they are infinitely nearer their market than we are, and can place their product practically fresh on the English breakfast tables, as against the matter of several weeks that it takes ours to reach our markets. A slump has recently occurred in the price of Danish, and Mr. Maxwell would' have us regard this as final proof of th-e inadvisability of making any further efforts to protect our interests. Will the Danes be found doing this? Will their representative in England advise his people that, owing to the fall in the price of their butter, they can discount any further efforts to control the market so far as their butter is concerned. No, sir, rather will the Danes, shrewd and businesslike as they are, make every further effort to stabilise their prices and avoid any further fall. Is there no need, sir, for improvement in our insane methods heretofore adopted of piling our produce on the market at Home irrespective of that market's requirements, and accepting whatever price “the gods” us? Truly, sir, we all know different. The vast interests of the • dairying; industry of this young Dominion, yet only in its infancy, demand that we should be up and doifig—what ? Helping ourselves, ■ of course; not sitting down either supinely waiting for,a lead from someone else, or for that Government assistance we are all too prone to look for, but actively searching for each and every point of vantage from which we can further press the merits of our splendid products; It has taken the recent terrible slump to wake farmers up. To-day, Sir, I believe they are awake, and willing and anixous to make the most of their advantages and minimise their disadvantages. One point, sir, has occurred to me which shows how supinely Jndiffcrent the dairymen have been until, quite recently to their own interests. At the N.D.A. Conference at the Winter • Show at Palmerston North last year, a proposal was put forward that an active advertising campaign should be inaugurated to set the merits of our products before the great buying British public. It was clearly shown (if such were needed) that this course was the -.most crying necessity of all, and the representatives of the various companies assembled were requested to put the matter before them. Funds were to be raised per medium of a levy per ton on butter and cheese, and what happened? Nothing. Everyone at that conference admitted it was a :big step in the right direction, and yet the farmers themselves, the various companies appealed to, turned it down. It has been left to the great benevolent institution, the wholesale merchants at Home, to inaugurate a system of propaganda, not, sir, in their own interests, of course—we all know that—but in the interests of the now struggling producers in this country. Since the conference alluded to, sir, the slump has hit us, scores of hard-' working, deserving settlers have token the “count” financially, and the homes they held know them no more. And still, Mr. Maxwell, nothing is wanted! Only a renewed measure of confidence in the benevolent institution aforementioned. Mr. Maxwell has referred in one of his previous letters to the probability, the certainty, according to his lights, of the dairy pool being a failure, the same as other undertakings he mentioned, amongst them the bacon company (I wonder which one he referred to). Well, ,sir, I would like to remind the producers, the men who pay every time, .of the words Mr. Harkness (the retiring secretary of the N.D.A.) used in his farewell address to the conference last June. He said: “The N.D.A., like all other movements for the benefit of the producers, was what they chose to make it." Exactly, and that applies to all other farmers’ institutions and movements. Mr. Harkness further said: Be true to yourselves; united, there is nothing, so far as your interests as producers are concerned, that you cannot achieve.” Exact’v, sir, and that is what the producer* to-day are, I believe, going to carry out. And are we not entitled to it, justly and fairly, from every point of view, in every sense of the word? Mr. Maxwell has dubbed the proposed movement “an unholy combination of producers to exploit the consumers." I think that was about his summing up. Never, sir! I am certain no member of the great body of dairy producers desires to exploit the consumer here, at Home, or elsewhere. But the farmer has woke up. He has lived to see the years of drudgery, toil and hardship on the part, of himself and his faanlly requited with what—ruin! He is going to avoid the pitfalls in the future. He is not going any longer to work and slave to produce butter to be shipped Home and then sold “for the benefit of others,” to be ultimately resold as best English, Irish, etc. If Mr. Maxweii thinks that he is going to make the great bulk of the producers believe that nothing Is wanted, that everything is all right, that we should make no effort to have the handling of our own products and no voice in its ultimate disposal, then I venture to say, sir that Mr. Maxwell is going to be disillusioned, and that, In the formation of the dairy ix>ol (so-called) and the successful realisation in the very near future of those sound and businesslike proposals now befoie the New Zealand dairy farmers,, he (Mr. Maxwell) is going to be clearly shown that at last the producers have woke up, they are coins, as Mr. Harkness exhorted them, to be true to themselves,” and In that unity which a successful combination, such as the present movement will brins them, snow to the world at large that, whilst only expecting the value of their products m the worlds markets, they are determined that to have, and no less. — I am, etc., .1. H. W. ANCBRBTBIN. Inglewood, May IL 1922,