IS BUTTER CHEAP, OR MILK DEAR?

Evening Post, Volume C, Issue 88, 11 October 1920, Page 7

IS BUTTER CHEAP, OR MILK DEAR?

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,—l am glad to see that "City Consumer" pleads guilty to not'telling the truth wnen he wrote that the cost of distributing milk in. Wellington was Is 4d. I principally desired to test his credibility as a witness. As to Mr. Strand, no one has yet attacked the reasons he gave in his letter foi- the fact that the Hospital Board gives him- lid more than city suppliers receive. Those reasons (a 100 pfer cent, winter production, etc) have certainly not been met by "City Consumer." But, if "City Consumer" were able to prove that Mr. Strand unfairly receivee more than other milk suppliers, that fact would not establish 2s lOd or 2s 6d as a fair price for butter; and if "City Consumer" proves; as possibly he does, that milk suppliers generally receive more (on a butter-fat basis) than butter producers, he still does not make good his case. If one price could be proved by reference to another, two wrongs could make one right. Atu quoque argument is generally* a sign of a- weak case; and it would be far better, instead of trying to make the milk price the standard for butter, or the butter price the standard for milk, to investigate the prices of milk products de novo. And this is what -Mr. Strand (in Saturday's Post) suggests that the Board of Trade might do. The methods of "City Consumer" and the mobilised correspondents suggest that the Hospital contract is some dreadful secret instead of being a public undertaking publicly arrived at with a distinterested public board under the eye of the Board of Trade, which a-ko fixed the prices of milk. The mud thrown at Mr. Strand is not sticking, and is not making the mud-throwers any cleaner. —I am, etc., ANTI-HUMBUG..