CHELTENHAM AND CONTROL

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3308, 30 March 1926, Page 5

CHELTENHAM AND CONTROL

(To "Rustlous.”)

Sir, —I am bewildered with ail the talk about pools and control and the ways and means of electing the members of the Control Board. No two opinions seem to be alike, and Although I have tried to follow the various arguments, every day bti&f* some new notion with the result that the ordinary farmer can hardly follow the different argument* I have read with interest many of your criticisms appearing in tha * farmer," and would like to your opinion on a circular that reaobad fcm a few days ago from my company (Cheltenham Co-op. Dairy Company), You will see by this circular that the directors of my company “desire to obtain a representative opinion of the company’s supplier" on the matter of electing the members of tfie Dairy Control Board. So far the intention of the directors was quite good, but I take the strongest objection to the rest of the circular. The ’first thing my directors do is to pass a resolution "in their own favour” saying that “the Control Board should be elected by directors of dairy companies’-’ and then they proceed to say why and wherefore. When they have told you all this, they ask you to give the matter your best consideration and record your vote accordingly.

Now ,air X contend that it ia entirely wrong to send out a one-sided circular of this kind and prejudice the suppliers in a matter that concerns every dairy farmer. If the directors wanted an unbiased expression of opinion, they should have sent out the voting paper without comment, or put both methods of electing the members of the Board impartially before the suppliers. That would have been a fair and honourable course to take. It makes the position all the worse seeing the directors are trying to take unto themselves a privilege which at present belongs to every supplier. Although I am strongly in favour that every dairy farmer should have a vote, I am not concerned with the merits of the different methods of election, but simply with the principle underlying the one-sided and selfish action of the directors in sending out the enclosed circular and then ask for an unbiased expression of opinion. —I am, etc., ' ■•IMPARTIAL." Pohangina, March 26, 1926. (Owing to lack of space the above letter had to be somewhat curtailed. For the same reasons we'cannot publish the circular in question, the main contents of which have already been dealt with by Mr. Dermer in his letter yesterday. “Rusticus” prefers not to express any opinion on the action of the directors in sending out the said circular. At the same time, he agrees with “Impartial” that it would certainly have been fiurer and more judicious to send out the voting papers without comment, or give an impartial exposition of both sides of the question at issue. It is not customary to send out ballot papers accompanied by the ex-parte statements of either side —for or against.)