NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY With which is incorporated the NORTHERN MAIL DAILY FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1920. SHARING THE BURDEN.

Northern Advocate, 22 October 1920, Page 2

NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY With which is incorporated the NORTHERN MAIL DAILY

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1920. SHARING THE BURDEN.

Registered for transmission through the post as a newspaper.

Butter is a subject which is bo much in everybody's moulh just now that it is i>robably unnecessary for us to apologise for mentioning it again. The maximum prices lixed by the Govern, ment for butter sold within the Dominion for looal consumption have been gazetted, and the housewife at any rate knows that they are in force. Very many people evidently have taken the increase of prices as a matter of course, realising that the farmers wtho depend upon the production of butter for a living are entitled to a fair reward for their labour and enterprise; But there are, of course, some people who arc far from satisfied. The railwaymen who recently suggested that the transport workers should declare butter "black" have not been heard from again, but the leader of the Labour Party on Wednesday iiiffht threatened the Government and the country with dire reprisals in the form of direct action if the Government persisted in its determination to allow tho dairy fanners a reasonable return for their produce./ Mr Holland evidently has some sympathy with tho railwaymen's idea. Yet it is by no ■means certain that he has the support of Labour organisations as a whole. The Wellington Trades an'l Labour Council, for instance, has. suggested

that all the unions which it represents should apply at once to the Arbitration Court for an increase of wages, with which to buy bultor. This organisation's suggestion is certainly an improvement upon Mr Holland's threat of direct action, though its idea of the amount required by the average worker in ordpr that he may be able to pay the higher price is a curious one. The official statistics show that the average consumption of butter in New Zealand is half a pound per head per week, but the Wellington Trados and Labour Council claims that the average consumption in a wiagc-oarner's family is one po\md per week. As the price of butter has been increased from Is 9d to 2s P.d the Council says that the -wage-earner shoul'l have another sixpence a week for each

member of his family, and it regards the average family as numbering five persons and therefore urges each worker to ask for a bonus of 2s 6d a week. By way of disarming criticism the Council states that bread and butter is "practically tho staple food in a working-class family.'' We must confess that t'hiw statement surprises us. In the past ten or fifteen years all the centres of population in the country have seen an 'enormous increase in the number of shops selling cakes and pastry and cooked .and tinned foods, the consumption of which has increased very considerably, and anyone who keeps his eyes anil pans open knows that what the Wellington Council calls the working-class family is the best customer of these businesses. The working-class family generally does itself well, and there is not the slightest reason why it shouH not, so long as the wages go round. But we cannot see that it would be subjected to any great hardship if it had to meet the little extra cost of butter out of the current wages; in fact, tho eonsumptioji of butter might be reduced a little below the average pound without causing widespread starvation. It would certainly ibo wiser for the workers to approach tho Arbitration Court, quietly than to follow Mr Holliand in a strike, which might prevent, any of us .getting even our modest half-pound of butter; but the workers would sihow a better sense of their ordinary responsibilities as citizens if they cheerfully shouldered their share of the newest little burden, which the dairy farmers have borne for them I long enough.