CASUAL NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 313, 4 December 1936, Page 2

CASUAL NOTES

(By “The Watcher.”) THE BORSTAL HOME. Tho above institution, which is situated near Dunedin, was the subject of a long debate in the House shortly before it rose. It" appears to be the one subject upon which the Labour Party and the Government do not agree. Borstal is a kind of semi-prison where early-stage offenders are sent for remedial treatment, but there is a growing feeling amongst a certain section that there is no such thing as crime in essence, but that all wrongdoing is the result of hereditary influence, environment, and so on, and that, therefore, the criminal should not ho punished, but merely kept away front t/omptation, and he will then grow straight. There may be something in all this, hut it must not be carried too far. The law must be obeyed, and the person who breaks it must be taught that lawbreaking is not a paying game. The prison authorities appear to bold strong views on one (joint—tho feeding of Borstal “patients,” if wo may call them such—and do not provide them with a metropolitan hotel menu. For instance, they do not feed them on butter, which is worth say Is 3d per lb, but instead give them fat and dripping. Tn this they are wrong. Milk and butter both contain vitamins that are absent from fat and dripping, and which are necessary in any balanced diet. From reading the Hansard report we gather the feeding and cooking at Borstal need revolutionising, and that what is chiefly required is to establish a good kitchen garden and grow the food for tho patients. PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION Frequently the Prime Minister (Mr Savage; gives to the Press an interview on the turns and policy of his Government, and every time lie emphasises the point that the first object of production is to feed the people of the country, and that therefore the standard of living for all should steadily rise with the increase of production. The proposal is an important one find worth examination.

New Zealand is a country whose primary productions all relate to food and wool. Taking wool first, our woollen industry is on a small scale. We are not exporters of the manufactured article. If we were to produce 10,000 more bales of wool than we do, it could be formed into money only by being sold and exported. That item must therefore be ruled out. Referring to food, there is milk in its various forms, butter and cheese, which represent a large portion of our exports. Now in looking at this subject we cannot deal with butter and cheese in the mass. We have a population of l~j millions and produce sufficient dairy produce for, say, ten millions. If we reduced the cost of them to, say, sixpence per lb, the difference in total consumption • would lie slight, for already our population is the largest consumer of butter in the world. Yet one realises that development must go on, and that our exports must continue to increase. AVliat are we to do then? Our local market is already exhausted, and nothing that Mr Savage can say or do will materially increase the internal demand.

Take the case of the dairy farmer. He is, we will say, a good farmer, and carries thirty cows, which at £l2 per liead give him £360 per ybar for butterfat, independent of pigs, calves, etc. At the end of the year lie finds he has made a profit of £SO. He puts the money into the farm—fells bush, ploughs, and harrows, and puts in more grass, and so is able the next year to carry another 20 cows. His buttorfat income goes up to £6OO, and so on. Now, what can lie do to help the Government? Nothing. lie has to export his butter or cheese, and rear more pigs, but it is all for the export market. Unless the population grows through industries no more butter is required in Now Zealand than the year before. But suppose there are ten or twenty thousand of such men who ai'b increasing their production, what will the Government say or do? It cannot order the farmers to reduce their herds. Neither can it increase the internal sales of butter, except by giving it free to everybody, so that Mr Farmer has to find outside markets for his products and thus the dream of equalising production and distribution fades into nothingness. No, the old laws of supply and demand are as eternal as the hills, and cannot be set aside by the theories of Socialism. EGGS AND POULTRY.

Every sideline to assist our farmeis is of importance. Eggs and poultry arc one of these. On every farm poultry should be kept, not only for food—eggs being one of. the most valuable —but also to help the grocery bills. I'he fowls should be housed and fed properly, cleanliness being most important. Experts say that a good strain of ducks is more profitable than liens, for ducks go on. laying for five or six years, whilst hens cease to be profitable after two laying seasons. We started pretty well some twenty years ago as an exporter of eggs, but Australia captured our best expert, Mr G. J. Merrett, and he has built up for them' a huge export trade. One of the modern developments is the sexing of eggs and chickens in the earlv stages. Japan has taken this up in earnest. The idea is to reproduce only from female eggs, or to kill off (after birth) male young ones, rearing only egg-layers. On this point, my eye caught in a southern paper a letter from a man of scientific turn (who is also a believer in water-divining) who says that by applying the methods of the diviner the sexes of eggs can be discovered. He says:—“lt will be news to some of your readers that eggs can be sorted out by the divining process (using the pendulum for this purpose) before putting them under the hen or into the incubator lor hatching. In some form or other this practice has been known, though not. commonly, for many years, and although generally treated more or less as a matter of frivolous interest or amusement, there is at back of it all a real and explainable understanding which readily brings it within the realms of the ‘exact sciences.’ , “In the case of testing the eggs for sex (and in the past some have used a ring, a button, a needle, or what not attached to a piece of string or thread) the pendulum is suspended from the outstretched fingers of the diviner, and directly over the egg to be tested. . “Although the experiment will nut ‘work’ with everybody, I have been rather surprised at the large number of persons with whom it will. In the hands of gifted or sensitive persons, patient, serious, and open-minded in nature, the pendulum, when suspended steadily over the egg, should record the following positive movements; A right-hand, gyrating movement or swinging in a circle clockwise fashion, indicative of the female germ—the pullet or the hen ; a half-hand gyrating movement, anti-clockwise fashion, indicative of the male germ—the cockerel or the rooster. If the pendulum persistently hangs still, then the egg is a “dud,” as. com monsense would also indicate. During the test the eggs should he placed upon wood. For position and handiness, ordinary table height is host.”