A NEW ZEALAND GRIEVANCE
[To the Editor of the SrEc-raToa.] sin,,--It was with pleasure that I read Mr. Robert Boothby's common-sense article on Imperial Trade in the Spectator of January 17th last.
We in New Zealand produce butter, meat and wool. The butter and meat go to England for sale, and the bulk of the wool is ultimately consumed in England, though much of it is now sold in N.Z. to British buyers. The quality of our butter and meat is excellent, and our farmers, who buy very largely of English fencing-wire and other things needed for making a new farm and working it when made, and for these things pay the prices asked by the producers of them, naturally wonder why their English friends do not treat them in the same spirit.
Throughout New Zealand there is a strong feeling in favour of Great Britain's productions, clothing, hardware, machinery and all that reaches our shores from what is briefly called " Home." We find it hard to understand why Imperial produce is often degraded to a position below its foreign competitor.
Our beef trade, once flourishing, has been extinguished bY, apparently, the vast imports from South America. Our butter is always placed below that produced by Denmark. To protect ourselves, the whole of our butter producers organized so that their produce might be sent Home under the central body who would so place it on the market that it should not be made the subject of speculation, and so that the price the consumer paid should never again exceed that which the farmer was paid, by 6d. a pound.
One would think that reasonable men would accept such an effort as a natural outcome of common sense. Instead we see hands held up in horror of our attempts at " price control," and we are made to understand, in the plainest possible terms, that the British buyer's right to make what profit he can out of our butter has become absolutely vested. And to prove it we find that, in this first season under the new method, the sale of New Zealand butter is being held up, and the price is at the moment of writing 24s. per cwt. below foreign butter of similar quality.
I have not heard one of our farmers mention the fact that during the War they voluntarily fixed the price of their butter in London at a value much below what it would have brought if sold to the highest bidder. If the New Zealand product had previously been driven into a foreign market that arrangement would not have been possible. To make the Empire self- Sustaining shall we not have to see to it that the foreigner is not too often preferred ?
If the people really understood with what scrupulous care butter is made in the New Zealand factories, and what a superfine thing it is, they would not permit speculators either to enhance the cost of it or wage war against it. I wonder if I should be asking too much if I asked Spectator readers to try it, and in doing so to make sure that it is the genuine article ? If they will do so they will, I am sure, be pleased
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