WAVERLEY NOTES.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 146000, 5 December 1917, Page 4

WAVERLEY NOTES.

FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT. Doc. 3.—Nothing has been wrong except the common complaint of shortage of help. It is almost chronic and will soon bo accepted as an established idea that will no longer hurt. One just has to arrange to do what can be clone and lot tho rest slide, i.e., produce less for want of help and automatically, what is produced increases in value on .account of the scarcity, and without worrying the same financial result is achieved. Seriously, though, it is becoming very bard to get men for any kind of work. At the State farm I saw a 10-horso jower engine driving ono shearing machine. At another shed there, arc four stands and the plant is working for one man. Again, at the Waverley Cheese Factory there arc three short. Haymakers are asking 3s per hour, well knowing that they have an advantage. Of course it will result in less production and still higher prices.

Shearing is well advanced here, most of the gangs being well ahead of ; last year, this on account of the weather, which is hot and dry. Ono feature of this year’s operations is the number of farmers driving sheep to one, central shed and working together, which has also helped to put tho work further forward. Tho lambs aro plentiful, but so. far very few have gone. With the Patoa works killing, they will soon disappear now. Whether they will be shipped is quite another matter *

Tho welcome announcement that the prices for dairy produce and the conditions have beer, settled will place directors of the various companies in a much more comfortable frame of mind, also it will enable them to improve on the shilling per lb. pay out, which ‘was setting monotonous, with tho price everything used on a farm has gone to. In different correspondents’ letters there has -boon reference to the late Captain Kelly, hut none seem to have known or remembered that the deceased gentleman was actually for a time a chief or headman of tho section of the Ngamotu tribe living at tho Kaircau pa, at Huirangi. This unique position was brought about by the agricultural enthusiasm of To Whiti’s followers about 1873 or 1874, for which they were sent south. During their absence, Mr. Kelly was given temporary authrrity. arid had Heru’s mere pounarnu handed to him as a token of his position. II is many acts of kindness to the people thus left in his charge were recognised by tho tribe, and ho had actually been presented with a block of land at Kawhia, but Native land legislation was introduced which made the gift of no value before he was put in possession.