THE PRICE OF GREASE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 131, 30 November 1933, Page 12

THE PRICE OF GREASE

New Zealand butter delivered to a residence at 8d a lb, and motor-car grease sold over the counter at Is a Ib, are two English prices quoted by Mr. 'Baxter to prove that the latter represents, and the' former does not represent, common-sense marketing. There are, of course, many pros and cons. The manufacture of motor-car grease can be curtailed much more quickly, and with less risk, than the output of a dairy farm. And while the grease oils a motor-car, the butter oils the human race, which cannot, like the car, be temporarily put out of action, for revival at a later date. In feasibility both of supply and demand, grease is quite unlike butter, even though butter may be like grease. A -marketing control of the price of motor-car grease in a given region might be attainable by two or three people in consultation; but even the* co-operation of all' the farmers in Britain with all the farmers overseas might not control the price of butter, with butter substitutes in the offing. The parallel (up to a point) between Mr. Baxter's grease and butter is illuminating. But it proves or suggests too much. It suggests' some parallel between motor-car consumption and human food consumption.' Such parallel may not be conceded by British consumers. They may totally reject it. Do the by-elections point that way?