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Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 903, 25 February 1908, Page 4

The success which the bakers of Gisborne have achieved by the adoption of the cash system will no doubt encourage bakers and other tradesmen in other localities to give it a trial. The Gisborne bakers have had six weeks' experience of the,system, and profess be satisfied with its working. The difficulties in the way of carrying it out do not seem to have been anything like what had been anticipated, the greatest drawback having to do with change. The tradesmen have the advantage of knowing exactly the value of their business frum day to day. They have no book debts, and consequently no worry on the score of bad debts. The most satisfactory part of the new order of things is that the people generally take to it uncomplainingly. The cash principle is the best possible euro for the bad habit of living beyond one's means. It has, how-

ever, the disadvantage of working oppressively in the case of the housewife, who is too often left without a regular supply of housekeeping funds. To reverse the words of Shakespeare, there is some soul of evil in things good.

In connection with the Government's proposals to assist burnt-out settlers, it is possibly just as well to emphasise once more that the cases which should receive the greatest and primary consideration are the "abso-

lutely necessitous cases." The Government, it is to be hoped, will not misunderstand the situation, and, in view of the whole circumstances, it cannot be held that settlers so assisted would receive anything in the nature of charitable aid. There is oo difference, moreovtr (so far as the nature of the assistance is concerned), between actual money grants, or lending money free of interest, than supplying grass seed at cost price and giving lengthy credit, and the various other particularised proposals of the Government in regard to what they intend to do to help the most deserving class of people in the Dominion.