HITTING UP OUR INDUSTRIES

Feilding Star, Volume 3, Issue 320, 22 July 1925, Page 4

HITTING UP OUR INDUSTRIES

Poildiilg’s Chamber of Commerce has done good service jor the town and district by emphasising the danger of the imposition of the new railway rates it the department insists upon the infliction of the raised rates as they affect- bedding s lead- j ing industry, the freezing works. | We are shill inclined to think thatthe Railway Hoard is not. out lor'its full pound of flesh. It it were, it would not linvo inviLo<| public ami private criticism of its new tariff. Rut if the Hoard goes ahead now and imposes those additional rates in lata 1 ol the I acts and brought- before the Chamber </i Commerce and set in detail in yesterday’s Star for all men to read ami which are to he sent on to Minister Coates—then the Hoard will Stultify its own progressive programme. flic railway services were organised to help rather than to hinder local industries. There should be sacrifice for the industries instead ol a pound-ol'-flesh policy. Therefore are we inclined to think that the Chamber lias been doubly wise in acting promptly as well as practical ly in bringing bedding's plaint before the public arid the Railway Hoard. Mr Sterling, who !rh;'. probably bad more to do with framing the tariff than any othei member of the Hoard, was probably not seized of all the I nets-- indeed, how can any one man know the ins and outs of all our local industries? As a mail' with n. trained legal mind, lihwever, and with the experience •®P an economist and the practical knowledge of a trained railway officer, Mr Sterling must recognise the really excellent ease presented by Feilding in its contention that: tin* Railway Hoard should leave well enough alone in the matter' of the carriage of frozen meats from the inland works to the seaboard. And above all things the Railway Hoard

must r(‘cognise co-operation as if concerns the primary producers, and not place the co-operator s on a disadvantageous plane when com pa ied with the rates ns they effect private concerns. If the* Hoard dees so differentiate, as is indicated in the revised tariff, then shall we lm liable to return to the had old days when our small farmers were entirely at the mercy of the proprietary concerns that paid the farmer for V"* stock not what the latter was worth hut just what private concern va« pleased to pay out. Co-operation has cured that, evil-arid the. object of the Wilding Chamber’s meeting was to einphaise the need for the Railway Board to encourage cooperation and to save an industry that mean s so nm<!> to the fanners, the workers, and the business people of Toil ding.