AT STARVATION POINT.

Te Puke Times, Volume II, Issue II, 12 December 1913, Page 3

AT STARVATION POINT.

Thursday No country is hit harder by the strike than the Buller. Not only is the industrial life of the community absolutely stagnant, but the spectre of starvation hangs ominously over the district in which there are over 12,000 inhabitants The supplies received by the' Defender have already given out, and people are in as dire a plight as ever. Flour is selling at famine prices, and hard to obtain at that. Sugar is an unknown quantity, and bread is actually being posted from Christchurch and Greymouth, as indeed are such articles as small sides of. bacon, hams, meat, etc. Never has the post office de.ilt with such enormous business, so great has becoi.\o the volume of traffic-a large percentage of which represents foodstuffs in transit —that mail contractors are put to their wits' end to deal with the additional matter. Extra coaches and motor wagons have been put on to cope with the extraordinary situation. At Wcstport the main diet is fish, in the mining centres it is eels. The butchers' shops open intermittently when supplies como to hand. The most alarming feature is that shelf goods, such as tinned meat, etc., are beginning to give out. Chaif and outs cannot be obtained for love or money, while local supplies of potatoes are totally incapable of

meeting demands. Many people who keep fowls are killing their own fowls off, owing to inability to secure the necessary feed. Altogether Westport presents a deplorable spectacle of trade rain. The people and the workers are on the verge of starvation. and never before has the effects of the general strike so loudly illustrated or its painfulness brought home to the striker himself,