PAPERSPAST

Seekers of Excessive Profits

I •—--.1 Under tho above heading "The Loca, - Record" (1.1.17) in referring to the - conference of wheat owners __ and ' V others, interested in -wheat-growing, at • which the Hon. W. D. _. Macppnald, . . Minister of 'Agriculture, was present.. > t says:— ''The foregoing is a sample of th. c Conference- which have taken place in " the, bargaining for increased prices for # local produce, and the urgent necessity of winning the AVar docs not appear to " us to entcjr into their consideration. 1 j Tho whole object is to get good pi ices , • i for all the product., and naturally a ' ecry able-bodied man who was not in" ! the swim aalicd himself why j hould ho . | volunteer for the defence of'his coun- " 1 ! try when th/ibo controlling tho goods : squabbled over tho prico of footl-3 slull's in tho raw material. Wo beam b lot of paltry arguments'advanced as to • why thoy should go. good, prices, and ' tho Minister here introduced ouc, and 5 seeing that food is necessary to Viu - . - the War as much as man power, we .| may well ask ourselves why has the, .produce not been conscripted as well?.. . Why mako a man go forth al a fixed : sum per day against hi. will while t those controlling ifiods can demand- or ' .we hhonld sny barter—for huge profits . j with tho Government? Thr-ic should • bo no bartering ou the- foodstuffs, but cneiy producer should be given a fixed i price, similar to tho man who gives his . ?.on ices and eeu his lif.i for his country. Every man must dofend Ins • fountry either by at . home or on the baJifcMd. ■ The man , vho goes' forth a a a soldier inns a aieat risk of losing all ho held dear to' | his heart in peace time. Why in , God's name .hould wo bo witnessing . nuch ungrateful and such unpsslriptio actions by the local producers of foodi stuffs under Ihe patronage of a farmers' Government? Havo they no hpait? Havo the people's rcprcsentf-* tives forgotten their duty to tho people i who sent them to Parliament? What v vis it for a man to be ruined in business . or -tiffer a loss on his farm during this . trying period when hundreds lose their precious lives'' Is np thought bestow 1 1, od upon the- man who goes tcf the light and gives up a lucrative job for' a .few shillings a day? Is no thought; given to tho man who comes back' maimed for life my! all bin hopes in :! life dashed to thr/ ground! Is va .. • given to tho poor wife'and , fliildrcii left without their bread.-.' winner, and they in turn get' a few i shilling, to keep them from starvation il.«ir and their com-, 7 forts in life dashed to pieces? "Why , Mich consideration fnr a section of tbo ' ' community ? If tho Government, did , « their duty, 'they would make them th * i their duty to tho country, and instead ," " iof coaxing them to grow wheat, 'ct< ... . . thoy would mako. them grow as ' ■- ; ns in jjcacn time at" a jUed prico, d ■ . i loss .heir farms, ~ , r *

Click here to view this newspaper article

This text was automatically generated by a computer. It has not been manually reviewed or corrected and may include errors. You can view the article in its original format or read the entire page.

About the computer-generated text

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a process for automatically extracting text from scanned pages. OCR enables searching of large quantities of full-text data, but it is not 100% accurate. The level of accuracy depends on the print quality of the original newspaper and its condition at the time of microfilming. Newspapers with poor quality paper, small print, mixed fonts, multiple column layouts or damaged pages may have poor OCR accuracy.

The page where this item appears has an estimated OCR accuracy of 98.87%.