THE SECOND CHAPTER

Taranaki Daily News, 11 September 1934, Page 17 (Supplement)

THE SECOND CHAPTER

FACTORY MOVEMENT STARTS INDUSTRY STILL PROPRIETARY. STRUGGLES IN SLUMP YEARS. By the year 1884 dairying by individual effoi-ts was beginning to show signs of overloading. Forest clearings were becoming thriving townships, railway 1 construction between New Plymouth and Hawera was well under way, and around each of the smaller towns the forest was being cleared away. Taranaki was not a cheery province in the early “eighties.” The aftermath of the Vogel policy of heavy borrowing was felt severely; sawmilling, that had been an important corollary to the clearing of the bush, was almost a /moribund industry; the trouble with the Parihaka Maoris had disturbed confidence and brought back fear of another conflict; roads and bridges were sadly needed, but the local authorities had small resources for either of these necessary public works; and many a settler was hard put to it to find sustenance for himself, and his family. Moreover the problem of marketing dairy produce was very acute. Storekeepers could only absorb the amount they could dispose of locally or sell at very low prices to the merchants who were willing to take the risk of sending salted butter oversea. The only comforting feature was that as the bush was felled the land nearby always provided excellent pasturage when sown in grass. Slowly, very slowly, the export trade of a few merchants expanded, and with their example before them one or two producers began to see the possibilities ahead. The refrigerator had reached New Zealand and with it came a new element in the dairy industry that was to give it a scope that seemed beyond the wildest dreams of the pioneers. Dairy machinery, particularly the invention of the separator, had begun to indicate that the day of the individual butter-maker was over. It was recognised that the purchaser oversea' wanted good quality and even quality, two conditions almost impossible to fulfil when every farm manufactured in its own fashion and the good and indifferent butter was blended in the merchant’s store. So about the end of 1884 the late Mr.

Thomas Bayley, a pioneer of great enterprise, built a small factory near Waitara and purchased milk for separation from the farmers in the district. One of the employees in that initial dairy enterprise was Mr. H. M. Purdie, Waitara, better known to-day as the chairman for many years of the successful North Taranaki Co-operative Dairy Company Ltd. which owns the factory at Onaero. Not many months after Mr. Bayley’s factory' was established the late Mr. J. C. George, New Plymouth, built a factory at Tikorangi which he sold later to Messrs Hine, Knuckey and Co., a firm that introduced to North Taranaki the first essay in co-operative dairying. In the meantime, however, at Opunake, the first registered dairy company in the province, the Opunake Dairy Co. Ltd., was registered in the year 1885. Here again the element of co-operation existed in that while shades in the company were held by non-suppliers, the articles of association provided that milk should only be received from shareholders. Mr. A. H. Moore, Opunake, was secretary to the company, and the Daily News is indebted to him for the information regarding the company contain-

ed in this issue, to which further reference is. made elsewhere. But the day of successful co-operation had not yet dawned. Mr. Bayley’s factory, though it was sold later on, remained a proprietary establishment for some years, the Opunake venture also became privately owned, the purchaser in each case being the Crown Dairy Company, of which Mr. Richard Cock, New Plymouth, and the late Mr. Newton King and Mr. J. C. George were members. The formation of this company did much to' foster the dairy industry. It was strong enough financially to take risks, to establish factories and creameries where there seemed reasonable hope of supplies being available, and to finance settlers for larger, herds and material for the improvement of their holdings. In addition it had the organisation available for the disposal of the output of its factories, no longer as salt butter in kegs, but as a highclass commodity sent to England as refrigerated cargo. But tfie proprietary movement was not confined to the Crown Dairy Company. At Inglewood and elsewhere there were small “farm-factories” at which milk was received from neighbouring holdings, and in the year 1887 the late Mr. Chew Chong established the first factory in Central Taranaki. It was situated at Eltham, and an official report of the Government Dairy Inspector commended the factory for its up-to-date equipment and general cleanliness. With the establishment of the factory system-the dairy industry may be said to have been firmly established in Taranaki. It had proved iap industry upon which the settler could rely even in those days when milk was paid for at as low a rate as llxi a gallon, and when the production season was necessarily limited to the summer months because in . the. winter it would have been im-

possible to cart milk from rnany of the farms. The mechanics of the industry had. been successfully mastered. The next phase was a reorganisation of its economics.