WINTER BUTTER.

Waipa Post, Volume I, Issue 21, 27 June 1911, Page 2

WINTER BUTTER.

THE Trades and Labor Council formed a deputation and waited on the Acting Minister of Customs a few days ago (writes the Opunake Times) to request that the duty on Australian butter should be reduced so as to allow it to enter the market as a competitor with the local product. In the event of the duty not being

taken off, then they asked' that .he Government should establish State dairies to keep the price at a fair figure. The Minister, in replying, said he did not think the proposal to start a State dairy was practicable. The Government, he said, would need 50,000 acres under dairying to make much difference. Commenting on the request the Times states: Both the request to start Government dairying, and the Minister’s reply, so as to supply the needs of the Trades and Labor Council for a few weeks in the dead of winter is deadly funny. Possibly the Minister had heard of the Government State Farms and the price they can turn butter out at them, which led to his caution in reply. Mr D. McLaren, M.P., who introduced the deputation, said the workers found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. What about the working farmers ? To produce butter in the winter the cost is enormously increased, and even to receive double the price for a couple of months in the winter, which the butter brings in the summer, would be none too great compensation. It is, however, the same old story. The farmer works as a unit, instead of combining, and is consequently at the mercy of every other class of labor which bands itself into a Union. It is only a few weeks ago since the ironmasters preferred a request for an increase of duty on all farm implements and other ironwork required in agriculture, so as to keep up the wages of the ironworkers, and we do not remember hearing of the farmers approaching the Minister in opposition. The farmer at every point allows himself to be exploited by every other industry, but for want of combination never voices effectively his own grievances. He has a nominal Farmers’ Union, and one chief plank of its policy with regard to Customs is, “Taxation for revenue purposes only,” but although the majority of farmers agree with this, instead of combining to endeavour to give effect to it, they content themselves with uttering the cry, whilst all other branches of workers pull together to bump up the protective tariff to increase their own wages and improve their conditions of labor.