DAIRY FACTORY COSTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 October 1930, Page 2

DAIRY FACTORY COSTS.

(To the Editor.)

Sir,. —Would you please -allow me space in your paper to enlighten one of your correspondents, signing himself “Butter-fat.” I don’t know what is worrying “Butter-fat,” but I presume it is the ‘’low prices at- the present time. But keep smiling and remember a faint heart never won a fat turkey. What of our forefathers? They had no motorcars, no motor-lorries, no electricity, no wireless and no market for their butter. Did they moan? Not they. Now “Butter-fat,” getting up in the morning with a grouch, milks his cows and goes to tho°factory, looking for someone else with the same complaint to air his woes, but failing to find one drives up to the stage,to hear a pleasant good morning from the manager and hear one of the boys inside whist ling something jazzy like “Keep Your Sunny Side Up,'” and, not feeling too pleased, he classes them as Bolsheviks straight from Moscow. If the factory hands remind “Butter-fat” of Bolsheviks, then Russia can’t be a bad place. “Butter-fat” says here is what it costs to run a factory employing 22 hands at £5 per week each. Now, there are not many factories in Taranaki employing more than 20 men under .one roof—very few, perhaps one or two —the average being about 10 or 12. In the award a first assistant gets £5 .3s 6d, second assistant £4 17s 6d, third assistant £4 10s, all others £4 Is—only one over a fiver, and what of him? He will most likely have to be a married man holding an engineer’s certificate. The company cha/ges him approximately £1 per week for .louse rent and firewood, leaving him £4 3s, '6d to keep himself and family. _ The same applies to the second assistant and third also, if they be married -n-m. Now for the other- Moscowites with their £4 Is per week. These men are only casual, and are put off as soon as their average being about seven months’ work. They are put off in the worst months of the year to find work. Now

here is something near what the hands receive, assuming that the first, second and third assistants are paid throughout the year, and tho others eight months: First assistant £220 per year; second, £2OO per year; third, £180; and tho others, 19 men at £4 Is for 32 weeks, less 5s each for bach, £2310; total, £2900. “Butter-fat” says £5700. He is certainly, afe he said, in the vicinity—only £2BOO out. Now if times are bad and things look a bit grey we haven’t another war to face, and if “Butter” is hard hit let hitu put in six months in a dairy factory and then he may wake up to the fact that Bolshevism doesn’t exist in th’.s country. If “Butter-fat” chooses to do that he may find it a bit hard having to work seven , days a week, with no town on Tuesdays and Saturdays and no race meetings; no time to joy nde on Sunday? in a motor-car. Then I think “Butter-fat” will alter his opinion.—l am, etc., SUNNY SIDE UP.