SUPPLY OF VEGETABLES

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 69, 18 September 1930, Page 8

SUPPLY OF VEGETABLES

PRISON LABOUR

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—lt is not perhaps generally known that from the Prison Camp at Trcntham the Wellington fruit and vegetable markets are being supplied with a very considerabe quantity of vegetables several times a week. I see these' vegetables being transported to Wellington—and I have seen them unloaded and sold in the markets.

Having by my labour on my market garden to provide for my family, pay the commitments on my home, pay my borough and county rates, pay my hospital rates, pay to assist the unemployed, regularly contribute my quota of produce to assist in the financial success of philanthropic activities, my feelings can more easily be imagined than described when, after I have discharged my. load of produce into the market, I see a P.W.D. (does this stand for Prison Work 3 Department ':) motor-lorry back into a dock and then observe a prison warder give orders to a Chinese prisoner to unload the produce into the market to be sold by auction in competition with my own. I understand that, quite recently, a deputation made representations to the Minister in charge of prison labour for the production of vegetables, but did not get a great deal of consideration.

In soliciting space for this letter in your journal my object in writing is to endeavour to rouse the market gardeners to the danger of the Continuation and probable extension of this uneconomic policy on the part of the Government. To my mind this constitutes a menace to our occupation and future well-being, and one which i£ not dealt with immediately will involve the market gardener, particularly in the Hutt Valley, in financial ruin, and deprive us of the means of providing for our families.

An unkind fate has made us market gardeners, and now a posing democratic Government theatens us with extinction at the hands of prison labour. The Government, pursuing this line of least resistance, is doing so on a practically unorganised, and consequently politically inarticulate section of the primary producers.

it is true that here.in the Hutt Valley we are not in a state of organisation that we might be, but this is no time for the toleration of the petty jealousies or the imagined slight. The menace is too real and of such far-reaching possibilities that it at once becomes almost a national question involving principles sacred to every lib-erty-loving citizen. The market gardeners have to light this matter to the bitter end, and I for one am not prepared to stand idly by and see the means of my living filched from me through the employment of prison labour. So what are we going to do about it? To stop it -will mean a big fight, and perhaps an expensive one, involving other interests than our own, but that it should be stopped, that it must be stopped, and that it can be stopped, is the opinion of D. K. PRITCHARD. Lower Hutt, 19th September.