The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE. SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 1888

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2450, 24 March 1888, Page 2

The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE.

SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 1888

Equal and exact justice to all men, Of whatsoever state or persuasion, religious or political.

The relative prices of wheat and flour in Otago appear to bear more favourable comparison between each other than is the case in this part of the colony. Although Southern millers are not over anxious to operate in the new crop to any large extent at present, beyond what is necessary for local requirements, we gather from the Oamaru Mail, a paper circulating in one of the most important grain producing districts of the colony, that wheat is quiet at present, top prices for prime milling being 3s 4d per bushel, 3s 2d to 3s 3d for medium, and 2s 6d to 3s for inferior and fowl wheat. Our latest Australian advices state that the Sydney wheat is firm at 3a 6d to 3s 8d for milling sorts, and at Melbourne it is brisk at 3s 5-Jd. In England colonial wheat, March crop afloat, seems to fluctuate between 30s and 353 the quarter. Our Waikato farmers are now offered 2s Sd to 2s 9d per bushel for prime qualities ; we were informed, but cannot credit the statement, that one grower lias been offered by a local buyer as low a price as 2s per bushel. The disparity between the prices of flour is also remarkable. In Melbourne, the last quotations for roller flour, is £7 10s per ton. In Otago, millers are selling guaranteed flour at £8 and £8 10s per ton. These prices are also given in Canterbury quotations. But in Auckland, invoices of flour supplied to bakers by the millers in that city have been produced showing that the prices charged have been as high as £11 10s and £11 15s per ton. It is outrageous ; and the explanation of it has not been forthcoming. To most of the uninitiated it remaius one of those monstrous mysteries of trade within the ken only of the most finished past-mas-ters. The millers who refuse to give the grower an equitable value for his grain, but who sell their flour to the bakers at an exorbitant price not justified by the state of other markets in the colonies, deny that they are making any profit. According to their own showing they are somewhat to be pitted. Again, the baker?, who charge their customers a heavy price for bread, indignantly repudiate the assertion that they are deriving a tremendous percentage, and point to the fact that a large proportion of those in the trade have had to seek refuge in the Insolvency Court. Nevertheless there remains the painful evidence, which cannot he controverted, that between the prime cost of grain and the price of bread, the customer is bled without mercy for an enormous percentage of profit which disappears somewhere between him and the grower; it certainly does not go to the latter, and it is clear both

are the sufferers. With those whi have FOme knowledge of c ilonial cus toms, it is not difficult for them t< i arrive at a conclusion, and to locate thi absorption of the gross gains obtained !' from the labours of the cultivators of th< soil.