PRICE OF BREAD

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 72, 26 March 1931, Page 12

PRICE OF BREAD

"At the present .time the Government is pressing in the House of Representatives for a reduction in the wages of employees by 10 per cent., to be operative from the Ist April, and this Bill is being opposed by the Labour Party in so much as it wishes to see some concrete evidence of a fall in the edst of living to compensate for the reduction in wages," writes "Interested." "Although bread in itself does not represent a very large amount of expenditure to the average household, the total cost spread over a, period is a very important item, and it is. noteworthy that this article of diet is practically the one food that has not fallen in price for a considerable period."

The correspondent concludes: "To-day wheat and flour can be imported from several exporting countries in the world to land here at well under half the price charged by New Zealand millers. Australian flour can be bought at £6 10s. The duty alone amounts to the sum of £9 10s for a ton of flour. It is recognised that the Canterbury wheat growers, by the fact that a good deal of capital is sunk in their land, and employing labour to a very large extent, are entitled to reasonable protection, but when they insist upon maintaining these duties in spite of the enormous handicap that they are forcing on the whole of the rest flf New Zealand, it is time that the Government realised that surely these duties can be reduced to a reasonable basis to enable bread to be retailed cheaper, and thus materially help the Government to prove that the cost of living will come down in keeping with the fall in Wages. Are the North Island members of Parliament, who, after all, are responsible to their own constituents, going to allow themselves to be outvoted on this most important question?"