OUT AND ABOUT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1651, 21 October 1903, Page 46

OUT AND ABOUT.

On Labour Day (caps, please, Mil Printer), like most other gratters, I was off my chain, but though a loyal worker, I did not go to the great picnic. However, I did the next best thing, I boughb a ticket, and so the Trades’ Council. Committee has bad three times mere profit out of my humble Robert than if I had joined them on their excursion to Dayk Bay. # Somehow—l cannot just say by whatj “how”—on a holiday I prefer to go as far from the madding crowd as tune and the 'locomotive render conducive. On"this occasion I proceeded up tba Manawacu. and spent my all too brief re.sp.to among the backbone of the coun.try—car agriculturists and oairy faimers. Ket me button-hole Goldsmith: “Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, , A breath can make them, as >n breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country & pride, When once destroyed can never be supplied.” ***** Strange one never is long in the company cf diary farmers before, to thorn, the all-important question of the price of butter “fat,” and the factory “test” intrude on the conversation. It was the chief topic among those “cockles” with whom 1 sojourned on Labour Day. Even Chamberlain’s fiscal policy had to play second fiddle. Whether my identity was Huspecced; I wot not, but one of the company referred with approval to some remarks re the “test” question which recently appeared in this column., and our circle were unanimously of opinion that the best milk oow in the country was the farmer himself. At least, the land agones, commission agents and money-lenders seemed to make more, and make it much more easily than the farmer. And the latter, being now convinced tliat he works for the lot, is asking himself whether such are necessities orhixuries. and if the latter, whether or not he can afford to indulge in them any longer.

Conversation, I said, turned early on the “test,” and mention was made of the fact that all over the North Island farmers are striving to find ways and means cf .settling the vexed question. Some are suggesting Government testers travelling from creamery to creamery; o-thers are for employing* a man, who, besides doing a eercain number of factories, shall spend tho/cst of his time in testing the herds of the various suppliers. In support of these proposals, mention was made of a dairy-factory meeting referred to in the “Mail” the other week, at wlucli one of the suppliers stated that, being dissatisfied with his “tost,” lie had added water to “test ’ it, and lo and behold, his test went two points. “Yes,” remarked; another laughing, “but he wished he had held his tongue 'when the chairman told him he had been guilty of a criminal act!” And they all, with one accord, said That 3 so”'! ***** Noiv, that isn’t so, however much it may appear to be so. The factory supplier breaks no law —Parliamentary or moral—in watering his milk before taking it to the factory. Why ? Simply because he does not sell his milk. He takes his milk away again—or at least as much of it as he can manage to get back. He sells only the butter-fat, he is paid only for his butter-fat, and he cannot adulterate that by abiding water. No, the farmer who adds water to milk going to the creamery is not a criminal. He believes someone else is.

Yet this very question of tests must ever remain a bone of contention until such times as the farmers have imbibed the spirit of co-oneration in dealing with the milk from the time it leaves the cows, until the product (butter or cheese) is sold on the Home markets, and also in dealing with the bye-products m the feeding eo-eperativelv or pigs and pouitrv How long will the farmer be in learning this lessen, I wonder? Those who understand will toll you he is payincr very high fees for his education. 1:3 # *

A friend and I were returning home from an evening party the other night. Ivly friend drew my attention to a pci son lying on the roadway at the otheL side of the street. It was dark, but we saw two gentlemen approach the prostrate one, look at him, then, like the priest and the Levde, pass on. Heie, I said, to mvself, “is a grand opportunity to act the Good Samaritan.” Crossing qyq | went up to tiie fallen man, and, putting my hands well under his armpits, I tried to lift him, saying, at the same time in a compassionate voice, “Come on, any good fellow, are you not going to get up and go Home ?” He rolled, round and replied, as he took his hand out of a hole in the ground 1 , “Garn! go homo yourself, old un. There’s a gas escape in tiie lio-use % and X s in feeling ior* a stop-tap” I