APPLES FOR EXPORT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15919, 3 May 1912, Page 6

APPLES FOR EXPORT.

The efforts of the dominion to find a marktt abroad for app|es seem about to be crowned with success and the Prime Minister deserves great credit for the enterprise that he has displayed in assisting the growers. Government aotion has cleared away the difficulties that prevented the fruit being landed in Britain in uniformly good condition and apparently the connection that is being established with the Argentine buyers is also an outcome of departmental action. But while the ordinary citizen naturally is ready to applaud every venture that promises to expand New Zealand trade, he may be pardoned a certain amount of perplexity on the subject of apples. Why is he required to pay from threepence to sixpence a pound for reasonably good eating apples when the growers are eager to export thousands of cases on the security of a State guarantee of one penny a pound? . We are assured by tlio men who ought to know best that there is no such thing as a local fruit ring and that the profits of the people concerned in the trado are not unreasonably large. But if these contentions are well founded it seems necessary to assume that the business is organised along exceedingly faulty lines. The discrepancy between tho price that 4s profitable in London or

Buenos Ayres- and the charge that is commonly made here is surely unjust to the consumers. Perhaps the commission that is going to study the cost of living will be able to throw some light on this subject. In the meantime even the people who are compelled to do without fruit can join Mr Mackenzie in hoping that the dominion is going to establish a profitable trade in a commodity which it could produce in almost unlimited quantities.