Correspondence.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3514, 19 May 1890, Page 2

Correspondence.

FAIR PBICES. (To the Editor) | Sir,—As you have brought under 1 our notice the desirability (or die 1 fairness) of a rise in the price of meat, I would be glad ,of a small space in your columns to refer to another article of household foodan'article which'we could not well j do without, What would the. tea- j table be without a dish of good : butter? Why, Sir, if the people could not' get butter they would be ' like , the citizens of Wellington without the Evening Post (a leading newspaper), they would have no tea, and , yet, Sir, this article of food is shame- ' fully treated, The ruler of price's iff ( Masterton says, "5Jd to Gfd per lb," and yet the butter-makers aro fools enough to let him: go on ruling. ] Some, it is true, get 7d per lb, because their butter is good,> But, I ask, why , are not these shameful prices done away with—prices which area disgrace to the country—and good butter only taken in at a fair price ? Some of your readers will say they pay a good price for their butter. Yes, I know they do, They pay a shilling a pound all the year round, and the storekeeper pays 7d per lb, thus making a profit of 6d. And still they will have this 5d and 6sd butter-to keep down the prices', so that the producer cannot live and pay his way out of it, '; At the'same tjme those that make the five-penny butter get. the. biggest profit. You

ask, bow can that be ? I will tell you. The' maker of the inferior butter allows his milk to stand two or three , uutil it is sour, end sometimes i stiuking, to get the. whole of the , cream,-and tflien -churned it is half ! washed and kneaded together like a j woman kneads her dough, and then I packed off to market, - The whole j pricess occupies about an hour, , whilst a good butter maker skims aud churns every twenty-four hours, . and takes three or lour times longer 3 to wash and make up his produce, to make it really fit for the table. Again, the intorior buttcr-makor has the advantage in that from milkstand--1 ing thirty-six hours and more ho gets forty-six pounds of butter where he :> would otherwise get ouly forty. This is the way the butter trade is ruined here and iii other parts of the world.

1 saw: by your paper a few days ago that the 'Auckland dairy farmers, bad formed themselves into a society to rule the price of butter, Tbia is what wfl want, to take it out of the storekeepers' hands. Only; a few days ago a lady from the Empire Oily, said she paid Is 3d per lb and did not get good butter at that. It you say anything you are asked to read the auction price. -Yes, we can read the price of stinking butter. < Good butter finds a ready market without going to auction for sale. There are many things whioh oause the butter to be inferior-half-washfld pans, stinking buckets, sour ohurn, and not over-oloan housewife. But I only asked for a abort space, so I will 6lop. Trusting an abler pen than mine will take the mutter up and call a meeting of dairy farmers to adopt the same principles as those practiced iu Auckland.—! am, &c,, Dairyman.