Govt takes a hit on apples

In connection with the export of apples and pears last season, the Government guaranteed growers a penny per pound up to 100,000 boxes. Taking into account all expenses, this made a total by the Government guarantee of between 16 shillings 6 pence and I7s per box. The Home market proved variable. Full particulars as to prices realised are not available yet, but it is certain that considerable claims on the guarantee will have to be met. The Government has given careful consideration to the position of the growers in the matter of next season’s export, and, realising that some guarantee is practically necessary to enable exporters to tide over the long period between the dispatch of the fruit and the receipt of the account sales, has decided to guarantee the actual expenses incurred, not including anything for the fruit itself and not exceeding 11s per box. The guarantee is limited to 100,000 boxes, and will be confined to apples only. Otago shippers of apples are not quite so impressed with the generosity of the Government in regard to the guarantee for 1923 shipments as the Minister for Agriculture evidently is.

Dunedin’s sexual health

The Venereal Disease Committee sat in Dunedin yesterday, when a large amount of evidence was tendered. Dr Marshall, in charge of the VD clinic in Dunedin, said he did not think the disease was any more common in the last few years. During the last two or three years the number of attendances at the Dunedin clinic was 337, last year was 150. Syphilis did not appear to be a very prevalent disease here, but it was more common to-day than prior to the war. Gonorrhoea was not more prevalent than it had been for some years. There was a good deal of promiscuous intercourse, especially among young people. There should be health training in the schools for both sexes. Dr Emily Seideberg attributed the preponderance of men at the clinics as compared with women to the fact that frequently the symptoms in women were often slight and passed so quickly that the women did not recognise that they had become infected. Many still births occurred which were recognised to be due to syphilis, and many babies were born syphilitic, yet the mothers showed few or no symptoms. From her experience among single girls she would be in favour of a modified form of notification — by number only, and of compulsory treatment where voluntary treatment was refused, all treatment to be through the Health Department and on no account through the police. The whole, principle should be to improve the health of the community, not, as under the old Act, to make sexual immorality safe. Her practice gave her the impression that a large number of girls belonging to the respectable class were becoming infected through keeping company with men they trusted. The men themselves knew they were infected, yet they wilfully ruined young girl friends. She would favour legislation directed against those miscreants. It was usually through a moment’s weakness that the damage was done, not through vice or wickedness on the part of the girls. They wore not vicious or immoral, and deserved all the sympathy and help that legislation could, give them. If free clinics were established she would suggest that there be separate waiting rooms to ensure absolute privacy. — ODT, 1.9.1922