DID THEY SEE THE AXE COMING?

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 61, 14 March 1939, Page 8

DID THEY SEE THE AXE COMING?

We are not aware that anyone has ever written a History of Coincidences. They happen daily, and do not seem to be worth the special notice of either the historian or the psychologist; and perhaps it is as well, because a psychologist is always looking for explanations and for motives that tend to destroy the coincidence. A New Guinea Magistrate records in his book that just as the axe of an aborigine standing behind him was descending on his head, he jumped aside and escaped. Was it coincidence? Not quite. The agile Magistrate saw the shadow of the axe. So also with the rush of Tasmanian potatoes to Sydney, following on the partial lifting of the embargo on potatoes from New Zealand. Is* this rush a coincidence, or did the Tasmanian growers see the shadow of the axe on inflated prices, and did they proceed to counter it with a glut that would cut the profits of the deflating New Zealanders? Probably that question will never receive a satisfactory answer, for while the city consumer feels that the sudden plenty of Tasmanian potatoes results from prospects of New Zealand competition, the Tasmanian growers plead the rain forced their hand and forced potato "reserves into the market. The rain, of course, could not have done this if the reserves were not available. No one would dream of accusing the rain*of conspiring to defeat New Zealand exporters, so if the sudden potato glut and the Sydney price-fall of £6 10s a ton are purely a rain effect, then the long arm of coincidence must be blamed. But many people will retain their doubts, and will feel with Sir Frederick Stewart that glut and price-fall' reflect "something sinister."