BUTTER MARKETING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22578, 17 November 1936, Page 5

BUTTER MARKETING

SYSTEM IN AUSTRALIA EQUALISATION OF PRICES BREAKDOWN OVERCOME As a result of the recent decision of the Privy Council in the James ease relating to the Commonwealth marketing methods, the problem of interstate trading and price-cutting in butter threatened to become a serious embarrassment to the Commonwealth Dairy Produce Equalisation Committee in maintaining market stability. Recently, however, it has been announced that the problem has almost been overcome. The settlement of this question is expected to remove a good deal of unrest which has existed in the domestic trade since the decision. Excess Supplies Exported The Australian equalisation system has been in operation for some time. Each month the maximum amount of butter and cheese that may be sold in Australia is determined, and the balance necessarily is exported, regardless of the price ruling on the oversea market. For instance, only 38 per cent of the .butter produced in Australia this month may be sold on the Australian market, and the remainder, G2 per cent, "will be sent overseas. The price of butter in Australia is arbitrarily fixed at 140s per cwt., but any excess supplies shipped abroad have to bo disposed of at the ruling market price overseas. The Commonwealth Dairy Produce Equalisation Committee, Limited, has the duty of calculating the return from all butter sold in Australia and abroad, from which it strikes an average Australian price. Should the return from butter sold on the London market rise to 1-los Australian currency or more, the need for equalising the home and export prices would vanish, and no home consumption quotas would be determined. If the London price should rise sufficiently to bring a return in Australia considerably in excess of the fixed Australian price of 140s per cwt., it would be more profitable for merchants to export butter thqn to sell it on the local market, and unless appropriate steps were taken there would tend to bo a shortage in Australia. System Undermined

Since the inauguration of the dairy produce equalisation plan the London price of butter has not risen sufficiently to give a return to Australian producers in excess of 140s per cwt., although about a year ago it rose for a short period very near to it. With the system undermined by the Privy Council decision it would now pay any merchant to sell butter in excess of the statutory quota on the Australian market —that is, of course, if all other merchants did not do the same thing at tho same time.

At the present London price of 110s per cwt. for choicest salted Australian butter the net return to the factory is approximately 124s 5d per cwt. Therefore any merchant or distributor who is able to obtain a market for butter in Australia at or slightly less than 140s in excess of the statutory quota—for November 38 per cent —benefits considerably compared with other merchants and distri- . initors who remain parties to the equalisation agreement. Of course if all merchants decided to take advantage of the higher Australian price the domestic market would be broken and the Australian price would be determined, as it was formerly, by London values. REDUCED PRODUCTION FIRMING OF THE MARKET LONDON, Nov. IS The reduction in the Australian production of butter and the curtailment of shipments in the middle of the month have assisted in the maintenance of prices, but have caused holders of dearly-bought butter lo retain their stocks. LUMBERJACK DAYS PASSING OF A TYPE MODERN LOGGING CAMPS [from our own correspondent] VANCOUVER, Oct. 2t The word "lumberjack" is never used in North America these daj's; "logger" is used instead. The present generation of woodsmen has but a reading knowledge of its forerunner, men who slept in trees and would eat baled hay if -whisky were sprinkled on it—men who never changed their clothes throughout the winter, until the-snow melted and it was time to go downriver on the "drive" to tideway. These pioneers slept 16 to a" bunk, .100 to a room, and did not shave, with the exception of the "dandies," who removed their beards with a singlebitted axe, after the manner of the legendary Paul Bunyan. They worked in snow to the arm-pits. A good axeman could fall a spruce so that it would drive a stake intc the ground; a chip from his scarf would fell a yearling bull in his tracks. Tobacco" was in one-pound plugs. When winter was over and the "jacks" headed for town, such drinking and fighting had never been seen elsewhere. A man with "lumberjack's smallpox" was one whose face had been trampled with caulked shoes. Makers of glass eyes did a roaring business. One French-Canadian, Bulldog Fournier, claimed to have chewed off the ears of 22 lads who thought they wore his superiors. Times have changed. Lumber has "gone modern." Gone are tho bellowing oxen that yanked gargantuan butts over skid-roads that smoked from friction. With them went tho jerk-line buckaroo, or bullwhaeker, eloquent in profanity. Gone, too, arc the lads who wore known as cats on the logs, burling them this way and that with their sharp caulks. Logging railroads superseded the river (Irivcs. Modern genius discovered that lo<;s could be yarded with cable and a donkey engine. With the roads came motor-cars, newspapers and radios.

Thirty years ago a man who came into camp smoking a cigarette was eyed coldly, allowed to eat his supper and then sent packing down the trail. He was a degenerate, would stop at nothing. To-day tho logger smokes as many cigarettes as a debutante. Tin plates and iron forks have given way to whito crockery and table linen.

To the old-time lumberjack the saddest sight is the presence of women in the camps. Formerly women were taboo. Now loggers marry and raise families in the woods. Their meals are served by waitresses. Bunk-houses are now barracks, electrically lit, with hot and cold running water. Profanity, once of rugged stature, is now weak. Tho "schoolnuirm" rings a bell anil tells loggers' children about 1066 and all that. If Paul Bunyan came back and saw his successors, streamlined and wrapped in cellulose, lie would sneak to the darkness of the cookshack and drink to the moon in 80-prooi "lemon extract," while a cougar wailed far up tho mountain-side.