ABSOLUTE CONTROL.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 June 1925, Page 8

ABSOLUTE CONTROL.

AN UNWORTHY 'SUGGESTION. 'A PROTEST. A correspondent of the Wellington Evening Post, who, the editor declares, is neither a producer nor directly interested in the piarketing of produce, protests against the methods employed by Mr. W. 'Grounds and some of his colleagues on the Dairy Board in advocating the policy of absolute control of marketing adopted by the board. '“I cannot help thinking,” he writes, “that some of the advocates of ‘absolute control’ have gone much beyond the limits of fair controversy in presenting their case to the public in general and the factory suppliers in particular. They have attempted to make it appear that shippers and merchants at this end are responsible not only for the cable messages that have come from London lately indicating that people there are seriously perturbed over the impending advent of absolute control, but also for the accumulating stocks of butter on hand and for the depression of prices.” WEAKENING THEIR OWN CAUSE. The correspondent then quotes a newspaper summary of some remarks reiterated by Mr. Grounds and Mr. Goodfellow during their control campaign in the Auckland districts, and pointedly challenges the accuracy of their statements. “They know perfectly well from their own experience and present observation,” he says, “that the accumulation of stocks of butter in London at 'the present time and the depression of prices are recurrent features of the markelt at this season of the year, and that New Zealand shippers and merchants have nothing whatever to do with the fears expressed by the leading London newspapers concerning the assumption of ‘absolute control’ by the Dairy Board. Even if the local shippers and merchants were prepared to descend to such tactics as are being attributed to them, they would have little chance of inducing the great London journals to join them in such a discreditable conspiracy. The bare suggestion can only weaken the cause it was intended to assist.” * LOOSE TALK.

The Post itself joins warmly in protesting against the methods employed by some of the advocates of absolute control. “Loose talk in public of ‘machinations’ and ‘manipulations,’ it says, “has 'been fairly general. How much of such talk has filtered into the minds of dairy farmers and assumed the form of settled convictions we have no means of knowing. But evidence of complicity of local firms and resident representatives of British firms in the agitation referred to in the London papers is wanting—at any rate has not been produced. On the other hand, it is perfectly easy to understand the apprehension of the British consumer when control of supplies and price of any necessary article of food is mentioned.” WHO THEN? “All through the discussion favouring absolute control and compulsory pooling of dairy produce,” the Post continues, “the fact that the merchant gives service appears to have received rather scanty consideration. If services of any sort are rendered they must be remunerated, whether in the form of profits, commissions, salaries ar wages. The producer can never hope to escape payment of one of these; but “machinations’ or ‘manipulations’ are fatal to their continuance. Established distributing houses have not so built up their long and widespread businesses. Mr. Motion, a member of the board, stated at Dunedin only last Wednesday that ‘the Tooley Street people’ had expressed no hostility to the dairy control movement. Who, then, if it was not of their own volition and in the public interest, stirred the British newspapers to protest against control Clearly, local merchants would not rush in where Tooley Street might fear to tread.”

PROOF WANTED. ’2 Merchants no doubt can take care of themselves and their reputations, the Post assumes, but in the present state of mind of many producers it may be difficult for them to deal with insinuations made in public and private as affecting their good faith. The '“absolutists,” then, it is hoped, will in future be more guarded in itheir addresses, or at least supply acceptable and specific instances when making charges of “machinations” and “manipulations.”