The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 1911. THE PRICE OF BUTTER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 114, 5 July 1911, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 1911. THE PRICE OF BUTTER.

There is smoothing radically wrong when, almost before factories Inm closed down for the season,, New Zealanders are faced with a butter famine. All over the .Dominion there is an alleged shortage, and prices have ?;one up in some centres to a ligun beyond the purchasing power of main people. Our exports of butter am! .•hooso have boon on the increase foi i number of years; and while people in Britain and elsewhere outside fho Dominion have reaped a direct benefit both as regards the price and quality of these dairy products, the New Zealand consumer hat rad to pay what some contend it more than the full ‘market value, rims, while Dominion hotter, according to .the latest quotations, is Bolling it 108 s per cwt. in England—or less than Is per lb—right on the spot vh.ere this article is produced we arc asked from Is 2d up to Is Gd per lb, with the prospect of an increase before the new season opens. It is ill very well to be able to show that .vc exported £1,039,380 worth of butter in 1909—an increase of £109,198 >ver 190 S—but when our people arc deprived of the free uso of this noces•sary article because of its prohibitory price, thon.it is ,surely time to draw die line. The best of our meat has been leaving those shores for years tnd now the export limit in butter is; being strained, or some person nr persons have resorted to that most undesirable practice of establishing a corner. There was a time in the history of Now Zealand when circuit! dances forced the price of butter— Iml salt butter at that— -up to as nuch as 4s per lb ; but the conditions are altogether different now, and we fail to see why the people of this great butter-producing country should •be called niton to pay an unreasonable price for the commodity, and it certainly‘does appear unreasonable to want several pence more per lb at the Factory door than is obtainable over the counter in an English butter-sel-ler’s shop.