COST OF BREAD AND FLOUR

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 85, 8 October 1915, Page 2

COST OF BREAD AND FLOUR

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, — I read with interest your paragraph regarding the cost of bread and the cost of flour. You state that flour can be bought as low as £12 10s. Imported flour can probably be bought in Wellington at less than that, as at least one firm has big supplies of American on hand. Li your interesting paragraph you state that the matter of the price of bread will probably be fixed by the master bakers on Thursday. Are the public to be at the mercy of the master bakers? When master bakers, through their wisdom or foresight — one can take it as one pleases — bought flour well ahead at a cheap price, and raised prices on the basis of flour bought at ruling war rates, we had to pay tbe master bakers ruling rates. Are we now, because of their lack of wisdom and foresight in buying for forward deliveries at £17 per ton till the end of December, to pay for this too ? It ought not to cut both ways. Are the public to be hit because the speculator has bitten off moijeithan he can chew? A lot has been said about the New South Wales Government losing £300,000 over speculating in food prices, but nothing has been said about New Zealand merchant* buying forward and standing to lose thousands — which they want the public to pay. Am I, my wife and children, to be penalised because of the mistakes of merchants, or are we to get our daily bread— the staff of life — on the present day cost of production? If Mr. Massey commandeers meat, and is going to commandeer cheese, it is surely up to him to see that the master bakers have no chance of bleeding me and mine because of their gambling on long " options." All the bleeding we want to do is being done by brothers and relatives at Gallipoli, and if the time comes I'll bleed there too ; but I don't see the strength of being bled to make good the gaming chances taken by either merchants, millers, or master bakers. If I take a chance, I pay the piper, but I don't see that I should pay for the stupidity of other people. Flour is down, and bread should be down. — I am, etc., A FATHER WITH SEVEN LIABILITIES. P.S. — When the seven grow up they may become assets, and able to paddle their own canoe ; but meantime poor father has to provide their daily bread, and liabilities even ha\e a knack of increasing.