DAIRY PRODUCE CONTROL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19803, 31 May 1926, Page 5

DAIRY PRODUCE CONTROL.

TO THE EDITOB. Sib, —Your contributor, “EusUcub,’ in this morning’s issue of the Daily 'iimeSj commenting on the growing opposition of.farmers to Control Boards and especially to the absolute control policy of the Dairy Control Board, asks the question, “what does the farmer want?” He proceeds to advance the opinion that “farmers are hard to please I beg leave to differ from your contributor, and assert the contrary, for had the fanners not been so easily pleased with the specious and plausible statements of the prospective billet-hunters, who were responsible for the appearance of that atrociously tyrannical measure, the Dairy Export Control Bill, they would have fought to the last legislative ditch, rather than suffer such an intolerable interference with their inherent right to ai' pose as thay pleased under the law o, the product of their labour and capital. Hard to please, indeed! Why, no section of the community is eo slow to move m defence of its rights as the farming section, I could satisfy the most sceptical on that P “Kusticus” asks: What does the f armer want? Well, to begin with we, the dissenting dairy farmers, want the members of the Dairy Produce Control Board elected on the individual vote of the diary producer one producer, one vote-m accordance with the present Act. We want the da ry producers of the South Island divided into three wards, or constituencies, and the Worth Island into six waids, as nearly as Poasih-e all wards to he numerically cquahandeach vard to"'return one member to the board, thus insuring an intelligent vote, and a clean roll Finally, we stand four square for our constitutional and inherent right to the ownership and disposal of the product our labour and capital in time of peace and within the law on such terms and with regard to time and place, as may seem tc us most fitting, having regard to our and business obligations; subject, of course, to the necessities of the State. is there anything there that able? And let me point out that ** f/.Mii mands were conceded to-morrow ther . scope, and more than ample, for effective operation of a Control Board, minus the wild-cat schemes, whose very board" pends upon the assumption by the hoard, through Its chairman, of the role of arrogant di< l t r t th r ere P be a section of dairy producers who believe In pooling their Dn°<3uce ab a means of adding to their gains by all means let them exercise their liberty and do so, and good fuck to them. But hands off my property. Let them speculate with their ° W Mention Is made of the delegates (43 per cent.) who left the alleged conference Why did they leave? We left to emphasise. In the strongest manner possible, our refusal to condone the action of Mr Grounds, the chairman, In refusing to allow the de \°B at «® to express their opinions by yotlne, An tno manner provided by Parliament In the Dairy Control Act for the election of members of the board —viz., one producer one vote. We stood for the existing law —one man one vote. But Mr Grounds, chairman of the Board and self-constituted chairman of the meeting, arrogantly swept aside fhe existing law, and the expressed will of Parliament, and deliberately substituted a. system of voting which gave one person- control or 157 votes, to cast, perhaps, against the Interests of those concerned. And. remember this conference was called ostensibly for the purpose of obtaining a consensus of opinion, and an Indication to Parliament, of the best method of electing the members of the Control Board. It was then we made our deliberate and considered protest, by leaving the conference and refusing to condone such a deliberate plan to bludgeon the conference and hoodwink Parliament with cut-and-drled resolutions, the endorsement of which was a foregone conclusion under the conditions dominating the voting at the conference. I am. etc..^ Middlemarch. May 25.