IN THE PUBLIC MIND.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 238, 8 October 1934, Page 6

IN THE PUBLIC MIND.

THE INDIAN MARKET.

SUPPLYING GHEE.

(To the Editor.) Some three or four months ago I brought the ghee butter question before the Northern chambers of commerce. We had made inquiry previously as to what the Department of Trade and Commerce knew about the question. The only information the Department possessed seemed to bo two reports from Bombay from a firm that supplies cocogern (a ghee substitute) and other substitutes and. adulterants. The Department called the information "authoritative." The ghee trade is in the hands of the villagers and bazaars in India; the merchant is not interested except that he tries various oils as a substitute for ghee. About 1 per cent appears to be the margin of profit in the retail trade in India. Is it any wonder that adulteration is rife? The Hindu, like us, prefers pure goods. Pure ghee brings a very high price. The European insists on liis ghee being made on his own premises in order to prevent adulterants bein<* used. In India pure ghee is worth about 1/3 to 1/10 per lb. Adulterated ghee as eold in the market is worth about lid. lam speaking ill English money. No decent European will buy ghee in the bazaar. Ghee made here would be guaranteed clear of cholera, which is said to be largely carried in ghee. The guarantee would assist in obtaining a very much better price both with Europeans and natives. Both Mr. Goodfellow and the secretary of the Dairy Produce Board say we must supply adulterated ghee. Why not follow the advice of Europeans who have lived many years in India and supply pure ghee? If an adulterated substance contains animal fats we damn the trade with Hindus, Mohammedans and Buddhists. If we supply an adulterated article we give the opportunity to our trade rivals to slander us. Our butter is adulterated in England to make it an article which can be sold in a more profitable way. Following the line of argument of the people who advocate adulterating ghee, we should adulterate our butter he-re and send it home as Empire butter. Wliy pay freight to India on cheap adulterants, which are probably produced in the East? J. T. S. BRIGGS. Whangarei.

RELIGION AND SCIENCE. "A.E.C." is not, in my opinion, a serious controversialist, because he affixed the label "vitalist" on Professor J. S. Haldane, without even suggesting that the professor has specifically denied its appropriateness. If he thinks that the professor is a vitalist, he should have dealt with the weighty reasons given by J. S. Haldane against the adequacy of the usual vitalist view and proved them false. The whole point is that J. S. Haldane denies that mechanism and vitalism are tho fundamental antithesis. The professor does not believe that the mechanical description is an adequate explanation of anything that exists; he admits that everything in the world has a quantitative aspect, which can be measured and so described mechanically; but this is not in his eyes any more than a useful abstraction for practical purposes. J. S. Haldane attacks the vitalists because they start with the mechanistic picture as the full truth of certain aspects of experience and they try to add 011, ab extra, a vitalistic principle to explain life. In other words, he attacks the major premise of both mechanists and vita list's. Of course, the mechanists are anxious to lump all counter theories to their own together and label them all "vitalism," but J. S. Haldane is with Whitehead, Leibnitz, Fechuer and the great Greeks in regarding their attempt as crude, because he will not take an abstraction as the concrete reality. T have no doubt whatever that he is a greater thinker than Julian Huxley, Osborn or Joseph MeCabe. To claim that everyone who is not a materialist must be a vitalist would be as unfair as to suggest that anyone who disbelieved 111 unfettered individualism must be a Communist. I am glad to know that "A.E.C." is not a Communist; however, Communism seems to me to be in the political sphere the current and inevitable outcome of the philosophy of naturalism, which "A.15.C." espouses. H, K. ARCHDALL.

•' THE CJVIL SERVICE. It is about time that a truce was called to tlie thoughtless and useless pin-pricking of the Public Service, of whicli your cartoon "Boots" in Saturday's "Star" (September 29) is only one more offensive example. This sort of thing does tlie taxpayers 110 good at all, and the public servants, who, be it remembered, are also taxpayers, are needlessly annoyed and insulted. Personally, I strongly resent the suggestion that I would, if I could, ride and grow fat while my fellow citizens tramp and grow damp; and 1 am sure I speak for hundreds like myself, though less vocal. But facts are better than assertions. A Public Service salary of £.'IOO, "less ten. less ten, less five," bears the equivalent of a direct tax of £G9 3/. At income tax rates, this would be paid on an income of something nearer £710 than £700. That includes the 1/ in the £1 special tax, and makes no allowance for the fact that a man in that salary class would probably have at least £200 of special exemptions; "which means that his income would probablv bo in tlie region of £000. Reckoning 2d in the £1 on only £700, that man is nonpaying approximately £(i loss. \et you see fit to complain because the £300 man s burden is reduced bv approximately £13 12/. A. D. W. WOOLCOTT.

THE NEW MORALITY. Professor Anderson does >int explain the contradiction which I imputed to him. Instead, he sets out to show that I used one of In® terms in an incorrect sense. In his original article he endeavours to show two meanings of the term "exploitation" —one being mere economic exploitation—and the other being some wider sort of exploitation allegedly involving some particular moral considerations not contained in the notion of mere economic or rationalistic exploitation. With these two meanings before me, I repeat Professor Anderson's original statement: "It is somewhat remarkable that Mr. Dickinson should ha\e been led to choose the sin against the H°'. v Ghost as the type of primitive superstition to set against the 'rationalistic' sin ot exploitation. For in Christian ethics thry mean the same thing." There can bo no doubt that the thing which he declares to be identical with the sin against the Holy Ghost is not the wider sort of exploitation involving some particular moral considerations, but the plsm> straiffhtout rationalistic or economic exploitation. DEMOS.

SHIPPING COMPETITION. "Xobar" states that I would have people believe that all nations have a grievance against the British Empire. Then without attempting to substantiate the charge, he pi'°" ceeds to deliver himself of some highlycontroversial irrelevancies. "Xobar,of course, is entitled to his opinion, but it seems to nie that the brand of imperialism lie propounds went out of date with bustles. He does not deign to discuss either Dominion status or Anglo-American good will, as it affects the large British passenger carrying steamships 011 the North Atlantic routes. SAXITY.