MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

Waikato Argus, Volume III, Issue 207, 9 November 1897, Page 2 (Supplement)

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

The committee of the Wellington Educafon Board has reported that to meet all its responiihilities in the matter of buillings and repairs £11,988 would be required, exclusive of the excess of £1097 of liabilities on the 30th of last September. Taranaki people are proposing to form a company with a capital of £IOOO, half called up, for the purpose of sending Mr E. M. Smith to England again in connection with the ironsand industry scheme. Pubsetibers will receive shares in any company that may be promoted. Our meat supply is a very interesting item to householders just now (reports a Melbourne paper), and, judging by all the indications, there is good reason to fear that Victorians are in danger of becoming compulsory vegetarians. Meat is already nearly out of sight to the average family, and it keeps on rising The worst feature of the situation is in the fact that there is no visible way out of the difficulty. We must wait and let Nature take her course, meanwhile going short of the matutinal chop if we do not happen to have an income that will run to chops, which are almost as precious as jewels—in fact, much more precious than »ome jewels we have seen. Meat is none too cheap in New South Wales, adds a Sydney paper, and bread is dear enough to worry the poorest section of the community.

The New Zealand Co-operative Societies will be keenly icterested in the struggle which is now proceeding in Scotland between the butchers and cooperators. The former object to collectivism in trade, and are engaged in trying to break up the successful cooperative trading societies which have their headquarters in Glasgow. Instead of adopting the legitimate methods of trade competition, the butchers are trying that dangerous double edged weapon, the boycott. Their plan of campaign is simple and drastic. They instruct the cattle salesmen at the markets to decline r,he co-operators'bids, the loss of their own custom beiDg the penalty of disobedience. The salesmen were loth to adopt such tactics, but they have mostly caved in to the fleshers.. The societies then turned to the fanners and bought direct from- them,, but the Glasßow Fleshers' Trade Protection Association encounters them here by threatening to boycott all farmers who do not pledge themselves neither to deal with co-opera-tive stores nor with any of .who deal directly or indirectly with such stores.