BROTHERLY LOVE. The Bakers' Little Boycott.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 75, 7 December 1901, Page 8

BROTHERLY LOVE. The Bakers' Little Boycott.

SINCE the Flour Millers Trust and the New Zealand Mastei Bakers Asociation say so. the average person must believe that fiom 2^d per loaf to 3d is not an increase. That the combination is a philanthropic desire for the benefit of the public, and that the bakers who, because flour rose a trifle did not raise the price of bread with it. are to be boycotted Truly, the ways of business are devious and past finding out The millers, the bakers, and their operatives combine to protect their products, and to wage war against those other bakers who have the hardihood to paddle their own canoe, and will not see the advantage of joining their big combine to raise the price of bread It may not be so easy as the poweiful combine thinks to bring the malcontents to their knees, for popular sympathy is likely to be enkindled on their behalf There is always a compassionate feeling for the pigmy who tackles a giant and m this instance the pigmies are fighting the battle of cheap bread for the people Combines, and trusts, and corners are a kind of Yankee notion that New Zealand can very well do without If the combination works, as it certainly makes no secret of doing, for the downfall of even an individual, and the coercing of the public, then it is the duty of the public to demand that such combination shall be broken * # • In the birthland of the "combine/ the corner, and the trust — the Unit-

Ed States — the new Presiderb has, in no uncertain way, shown himself to be a bitter enemy of trusts. If, in his term of office, he can lessen the intolerance of arrogant capital, the people of the United States will arise and bless the name of Roosevelt. The resolution of the millers and bakers m New Zealand to fix a fair rate for bread is reasonable enough, but the boycotting idea, whereby some few milling companies and bakers are to be ruined, to the orders of combined capital, is not pleasant reading. * • • One Wellington baker, who does not see his way to toe the mark with the combine, has been explaining in print that already his millers have "orders" not to supply him with flour, because, forsooth, he has an opinion of his own, is a free man, and insists on conducting his business in hs own way. That sort of thing may be pushed just a little too far, and then the fat will be in the fire.