DAIRY CONTR0L

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12094, 23 March 1925, Page 6

DAIRY CONTROL

Discontent with the Dairy Board has broken out In a new place. The timber interest of the Dominion is aghast at the board’s determination to import butter boxes from abroad. It is surprising that the timber people have delayed so long, for the report of the boaxdi’s delegates contained a complete contract for the purchase hy the board of a vast quantity of butter boxes from a Norwegian supplier. The future of this country' depends on the co-operation of all the units of ita industries and its commerce. Yet no sooner is a contract established over the dairy unit with its twenty millions of produce, than we have a contract with Norway for butter boxes. It' is the very first business done by these “Jacks-in-of-fi.ee.” They turn their backs on their fellow industrials; they prefer the profit of a fraction of a fraction of a penny in the value of their product to the well-being of any association by their fellow citizens; they are against the spirit of Imperial preference which the best men in the Empire are seeking for the very best reason? to establish. Probably when the direct preference for oversea products announced as possible the other day comes up for settlement in the House of Commons, these men will find that their patriotism compels them to howl for it. But when it is preference for their fellow-citizens —leu them go to hang! Moreover, is this importation economical P The white pine in New Zealand is the best butter box wood in the world. That is the world’s verdict. In accordance with it Australian butter makers are clamouring for this white pine. But the Dairy Board delegates, as soon as they got to Europe, plumped into a contract for Norwegian timber. They will find that the saving in wood will be more than wiped away by the loss in the butter return. |To the laches of its introduction of control, to its niggardliness of information to justify a radical change, the most radical possible, in the handling of property, the Dairy Board adds its callous neglect of the interests of its fellow-citizens, whose fate is bound up with its own in enlightened unselfish co-operation, and a deliberate breach of the principle of Imperial preference acknowledged throughout the Empire. The dairy interest ought to he feeling sorry that it ever put this beggar on horseback,