The Price of Bread.

Waikato Argus, Volume XXIV, Issue 3752, 8 April 1908, Page 2

The Price of Bread.

By Telegraph.—Press Association. Dunedin, Last Night. A number of master bakers waited on the Hon. G. Fowlds, Minister for Public Health, with regard to matters affecting bread. x It was pointed out that although a certain wage for bakers' employees had been fixed at the last sitting of the Arbitration Court, the very men who had conducted the case for the Employees' Union were now operating as master bakers, and by doing their own baking and delivering, without the aid of any assistance, and working 12 to 14 hours per day, were underselling the bakers who were complying with the award of the Arbitration Court. The deputation asked that Parliament, which had fixed the weight of bread, should also decide on the price to be charged on the article. Mr Fowlds said he would place the representations of the deputation before his colleagues. If the principle of a price being fixed for bread was affirmed, it was hard to say where it would stop. In any case, if Parliament were to agree to a proposal of the kind, he thought that they would make.; it a maximum and not a minimum, and that would not be of any value to meet an emergency like the one the bakers were face to face with just now. There was, rightly or wrongly, an impression throughout the country that the price of bread followed the upward tendency of the flour market more easily than it followed the backward tendency. Regarding the moisture in bread, the Minister said that before taking any drastic steps the whole matter would be carefully considered in respect to the standards in actual existence throughout the Dominion.