THOSE DIRTY DAIRIES.

Evening Post, Volume LIX, Issue 127, 30 May 1900, Page 2

THOSE DIRTY DAIRIES.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— The President of the Dairy Union misses the whole point of your contention — namely, that the Dairy Board, while composed of of -practical experts, should not consist of men. personally interested in the dairy trade. Mr. Hope's simile of the Arbitration Board for the Typographical Union is not on a par at all. At present we have the farcical spectacle of an Inspector whose suggestions are (or were till lately) nullified by the interested opposition of the gentlemen who sat to consider them. If the Dairy Board is to do its work, it must be altogether free from any suspicion of pecuniary interest or control of any sort. .Your correspondent "Man's" contention that drainage from stockyards, washhouses, sinks, etc. (not to speak of the occasional presence of a dead sheep or so) renders the water of a stream (from which he says he repeatedly drinks), "thoroughly aerated and perfectly wholesome," reminds of the argument used by an old grave-dig-ger whose cottage lay close to an overcrowded cemetery, which it was proposed to close. "Talk about it being a nuisance," he said, "why I've drunk the water from the stream that flows through all them corpses for the last thirty years,

and it makes the finest tea."' IPs" that amount of body in it !" But to come to facts. I have seen black drainage from manure heaps and stockyard •-, and soap-suddy discoloured witter ilowing into the Crofton stream within six feet of where cows where grazing, and where they had access to the water. No doubt other streams in the suburbs are even worse polluted. When you consider the population of this suburb , and that of Khandallah is yearly increasing, should not that common sense of which "Man" has '-'o large a share, suggest some better method, or that the dairies be moved, further afield? Even if "Man" has a house to let, or contem-* plates building one from, the discarded rubbish that has been, ■ jately -'t&mpeddown at Crofton from' the condemned houses of Wellington,, and fears that my strictures will depreciate its value, his self-interest should, leach him that some better method of drainage and more efficient system of dairying will have to be, ere long, initiated in the suburbs if we are to attract the population they deserve. But possibly' "Man" has been so long imbibing some of those "aerated waters" that flow .pul of /the aforesaid drains and sinks, that like our friend the gravedigger, he prefers his liquors mixed. I am, etc., COW. Crofton, 29th May, 1900.