THE PRICE OF BREAD.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 16922, 30 July 1915, Page 6

THE PRICE OF BREAD.

The public of New Zealand are extraordinary patient under affliction, but they are beginning to be restive now concerning tho price of bread. Flour prices and bread prices have been sustained at extravagant figures all these months on tho assumption that there was a shortage of grain in tho country, and there has been from the beginning of the war period an implied assurance that as soon as,normal supplies of wheat were in sight a reduction of prices would lie insisted upon. Unless the figures given in official publications are very wide of the mark, there must now bo a sufficiency of wheat in the Dominion, and prices, consequently, should bo falling to prewar levels. But the downward movement is so slow that artificial stimulation is urgently needed, and it seems to us that Parliament, instead of wasting time on Daylight Saving Bills and such-like measures, might very well devote a little • attention to this highly important question. In the July number of that very interesting official publication, the " Monthly Abstract of Statistics,"' tho Government Statistician definitely accepts tho threshing returns as being approximately reliable. It will be remembered that the farmers' returns of acreage under wheat and of yields gavo a total available wheat supply of loss than five and a half million bushels, some half a million bushels short of requirements. The returns from threshing-mill owners, however, show that the actual quantities of wheat threshed this year exceed Fix and a half million bushels, in addition to which there is likely to l>e wheat still in stack. The discrepancy arises partly from the failure of the farmers to furnish full particulars of the areas under cultivation, and tho Government Statistician significantly adds that steps are being taken to discover what other factors aro operating. However, the important point is that the harvest produced sufficient wheat for the needs of the Dominion, and we are entitled to ask, therefore, why prices remain at famine levels. A census of all the grain and flour in tho Dominion was taken on Juno 30. Tho returns have not yet been tabulated, and wo suppose that when they aro published a period will be spent in discussing whether the figures are or are not reliable, so that a further excuse will bo provided for the maintenance of high prices; but it seems to us that if Government and Parliament were doing theiri duty to the people ther© would bo a speedy cessation of this par- > ticular sample of exploitation.