Nelson Evenign Mail. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1896.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXX, Issue 308, 31 December 1896, Page 2

Nelson Evenign Mail. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1896.

WB in Australasia, accustomed to meat twice or even thrice a day, even among the poorest, may not regard the bread question as adimportant. If, however, the price be raised a halfpenny, or if the cost of the four-pound loaf goes up too quiokly beyond the normal raie, the essential share bread takes in our food supply is soon made apparent. Even with a superabundance of cheap meat and other food the human body is so sensitive to the need of bread that its absence or scarcity wonld be felt as soon as it ceased to be the most common ] adjunct to onr meals.' As a matter I of fact, we can, and often do abstain irom meat by choice or from necessity, bat bread in some form is still " the staff of life." In these circumstances it is not difficult to realise the supreme importance of bread in other communities, among whom meat is scarce and the manufactured produot of wheat or corn is the stsaple food. From the rising under Jack Cade in Old England, to the "quene" of the Boulevard Bt. Antoine outside the Paris bakeries just before the Terror — and down to our own day, when the Indian wheat and rice crops have failed and led to a famine, or when the Irish potatoe crop becomes rotten — bread, or the want of it, has been the most momentous question of the hour, The world is confronted once more with that great bread issue whtah has been the father of revolutions. There is shortage in the wheat crops of the ohief producing centres, and the failure of the Indian rice export will deprive the peoples whose staple food is bread of one substitute for it. Already the London poor are crying out, and the misery and hunger of thousands are indicated in tbe seemingly simple announcement that in November last — the beginning of the British winter— the price of the 4lb loaf was 6d. In New Zealand we pay that prioe, or a little more, and do not complain greatly ; for we are a meat-eating populace, and meat is not abnormally dear. But the British poor have to depend on bread as the staple of every meal. For a generation the price of bread in England has been steady at id, or Id a lb., hence the rise of £d has spread privation and alarm, and aroused outcry from all classes, •• The Times," commenting on the matter, said the people had been singularly fortunate for many years in having been able to obtain cheap bread ; but the paper had to admit reluctantly that while the price waß quick to rise on the least rumour of shortage, it was as s}ow to fall when necessity for a rise no Jpjuger existed, " The Standard," on the other hand, boldly declares that there is no justification for the increase, even

in view of the shortening of the wheat yield. It points out that when the average price of wheat in England was about 40a bread sold at from 4£d to 7d the quartern ioaf, and that the baker pleaded his fixed expenses as a reason for making no redaction during a long subsequent period of cheapness of wheat and flour. The baker, therefore, is held by the " standard ' to have no excuse) for raising the price of bread to 6d while flour was only 2s to 5s a sack of 280lbs dearer than in February last, when the bakers were admittedly doing well. It is further pointed out that when the costof flour declined after a short period of inflated prices, the price of bread, which had been raised in sympathy, was not lowered. " The Standard " says : — " Taking 3s 6d as the mean of the advance?, and allowing 96 quartern loaves to the sack of flour, the difference in the cost of bread ito the baker is barely per quartern loaf. It is not much over |d on bread made from low-quality flour, and about fd on that made from the beat. Seeing that nearly all the best flour is made into what bakers call 'fancy' bread, which is almost invariably delivered short of its proper weight, an advance of i|d all round wouid 'leave the baker a handsome profit." But in the meantime the price is up, and there are thousands, halE starved before, who will be wholly starved now. During 1895 there were no fewer than 7 1 instanoes of death from starvation, or " accelerated by privation," in London alone. The victims included carmen, hawkers, corset and slipper makers, masons, labourers, clerks, a ohemist and druggist, a collar maker, picture-frame makers, a licensed victualler, a carpenter, a spinster, and others of callings and condition unknown. _ Many of them had doubtless starred in proud silence, for the cold charity of (he workhouses is not acceptable to any Briton who has a grain of independence left. Who does not remember that fine old woman in "Our Mutual Friend "-Betty Higden — who ran away to die lest she should fall into th,e hands of " the union " ? The average was one death in London from starvation in every week of 1895. What the average will be in I8i)7 with the price of bread raised by twopence the four-pound loaf it is difficult to aay, but one fact is clear : If at the present England was a protectionist country, or if her old corn laws, existed, there would be more starvation still. The grain ships would stand off outside while the Mark Lane middlemen arranged the " corners '' in wheat, and instead of mere dearness there would be a British bread famine. A duty of 5s a quarter on wheat — which the protectionist pleads and urges would " make no difference " iu the retail price — would simply enable shippers to charge the consumer the duty, plus monopolist or " ring " profit. That is to say, b'y the time the imported wheat became the four-pound loaf he consumer would have to pay tbe duty, aud at le'st three profits based on famine prices. Ihe curious part of the anomaly is that while the " 5a a quarter" duty might not " make a difference " in periods ot local plenty, it would make ad the difierenoe in tbe world in a period of looal shortage. It is nearly all the difference in South Australia now, where the protectionists are stultifying themselves by asking for a temporary removal of the import tax on cereals. It is making all the difference in Viotoria, and in .New Zealand as well, for the looal price of bread— Gd and 7d the 41b loaf—is mote than the poor can afford to pay, yet they have to pay it or go breadiess. In Nelson | the average price of the 41b loaf was raised to 7d at the end of 1895, and it has continued at that level, no attempt having been yet made to raise it still higher in sympathy 1 with. the recent rise in flour. On the other hand no attempt was made to lower the price iu the intervening period. Thus we have had dear bread though there has been no shortage in our own wheat yield. What would the result have oeen under " protection " had the conditions ruling in Amenoa, India, and South Auatrdla extended to r-ew 1 Zealand ? The poor would have realised that the protectionists typical "5b a quarter" fluty made " all the difference " in the world in their bread bill, just as it is making all tbe " difference in the world" to the starving thousands of tho protected oontinent of Europe. In freetrade England the baker and the miller dare not charge famine rates, because the shipper dares not keep his wheat in bond or on vessels till he gets his own price. In a " protected " country with a whea' shortage, however, Bishop Ratio's historic trick can be, and is being, played with impunity. Let the working man learn from this simple and domestio object lesson the extreme folly of protection,