DANGERS OF COMPULSORY POOLING

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 32, 7 August 1923, Page 6

DANGERS OF COMPULSORY POOLING

"If the dairy-farmers of this country want legislation, they have simply to say so, and they will get it," said the Prime Minister in the House of Representatives a few days ago; and it looks very much as if they are going to get it. But the dangers of the pooling proposals in dairy control legislation were specially drawn attention to by the Wellington Chamber of Commerce yesterday, for in such proposals the business men constituting the Chamber see a mischievous and dangerous principle about to be framed by a law. As the Chamber viewed the Dairy .Produce Export Bill, that measure furnished but another instance of the undesirable inclination of the Government to interfere in commerce. As we predicted at the time the Meat Export Control Act was being discussed, its passing would be followed by a demand for a Dairy Export Control Act, and probably special legislation affecting wool and other produce. All this at bottom is in the direction of pooling the produce of the country with the single end in sight of getting the utmost out of the market, even up to breaking point, that point beyond which the consumer will not or cannot go ; a point that need have little or no relation to cost of production. Artificial scarcity and ■ correspondingly high prices are possible _under a pool; and this legislation that the Government is asked and seems willing to push through Parliament will leave the producer himself no choice in the matter of disposing of his produce. If the proposed Board decides that it shall be held in store for such and such a price, it will be so held; its owners will have no voice. The voice of the Board shall be heard, arid none other. That is the producers' affair; but the consumer, here and overseas,.- has a wholesome and 'justifiable dread of pools. Queensland, under a Labour Government, furnishes an instance of butter-pooling that may well cause consumers in this country to think seriously of what a pool under Government sanction may mean to them. Some informal tion of this Queensland pool in re^ lation to the consumer was given in " The Post " last evening.'

We admit that if the compulsory pooling clauses in the Dairy Produce Export Bill are cut out, the measure will be regarded by its advocates as emasculated. Even so, they are not acceptable by a very large number of dairy company directors; and Mr. Massey has already said that the Bill must have the approval of " a substantial majority" of them. It may be asked: if a meat pool, why not a dairy pool? But the Meat Producers Board, although possessing the power to compel pooling, has not yet exercised that power; whereas the dairy farmers may demand that compulpory pooling shall begin as soon as the Bill becomes a law. With Mr. John Myers, president of the Chamber of Commerce, the general public will naturally ask, if this compulsory pooling of dairy produce becomes law, where will it end 1 There will b© egg pools, fruit pools, honey pools, all in the direction of keeping up prices and making the cost of living higher. And there is another aspect of the pooling of dairy produce that must not be regarded as unworthy of consideration : possible retaliation on the part of those who will distribute the produce in the ' overseas markets. The Government is being asked in this Dairy Produce Control Bill to endorse a huge butter and cheese combination. Unless such a combine can link up with English, Welsh, Irish, Australian, Canadian, Danish, and Argentine dairy producing interests, it, will ever be exposed to the risks of severe, possibly ruinous, competition from foreign countries, in which, for the sake of its own food supplies, Great Britain will be compelled to acquiesce.