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Waikato Times, Volume xxx, Issue 2430, 7 February 1888, Page 2

Tim Herald is responsible for tho statement that the millers will be unable to oiler very good prices to the Waikato farmers for their wheat. In fact it is said that we will be undersold by Southern growers, who can land their grain in Auckland at a less cost than we can place our local wheat in the same market. This latter statement may or may not be a true one ; in any case it is patent to all that the Waikato farmers will be deliberately deprived of the fruits of their industry and toil by a ring who imagine they hold them at their mercy. The greatest inducements in the form of tempting promises of high prices were held out to them to put as much land as possible down in wheat for the present season, and yielding to those apparently satisfactory assurances about four times the area of the previous year has been in cultivation of that cereal. An abundant harvest has been afforded thena, and on which the hopes of the farmers have been built to recoup them for the failures and losses of past years ; but it seems they are not to enjoy any such pleasurable anticipations, for the edict of their lords has been declared, that those who did not sow shall reap the harvest. There is a limit to human patience and endurance, and we imagine that limit has been reached here. The fanners should take a firm stand and combine against any machinations for their own destruction, and having formed a mutual protection combination, they should adopt some such course as this ; elect a representative to proceed to Melbourne, Sydney or other outside market, and there place the whole of the wheat of the Waikato, without any intermediary intercourse between them and Auckland buyers. Or, they could store theirgrain declining to part except at a fail - remunerative price; or, finally even throw it to the pigs rather than submit to the humiliation of seeing a few speculators making large profits at their cost and mocking them as well. Combination properly organised will checkmate such attempts.