Hot heads in the cooling room

Strong personalities and dairy industry politics lead to a brouhaha in 1910, writes Russell Poole.

The new cheese factory at Tiakita¯huna, officially the Empire Cheese Factory, was declared open on August 31, 1909.

The advisory board overseeing the factory had David Buchanan and Mizpah Richardson, two dairy farmers, as its chairman and secretary respectively.

The remaining members were George Stratton, a farmer who doubled as the local shopkeeper and postmaster, Ernest Nielsen, a pig farmer, and Albert Gallichan, a dairy farmer.

Buchanan and Gallichan were both new-comers to the district. Both could fairly be described as outspoken, particularly Gallichan.

Trespass notices, complaints to the county council and letters to the editor flowed from his pen. The editor of the Manawatu¯ Standard tried to apply closure but to little avail.

In a month or so Gallichan and his various opponents, particularly Buchanan, would be back.

When it came to dairy cattle, Buchanan favoured Ayrshires, while Gallichan championed Holstein-Friesians. Both their breeds were consistently winning prizes at the A&P shows.

The opening of the Empire Cheese Factory was marked by a banquet in the cooling room, dished up by Jennie Rawlins. The go-to person for such catering, Rawlins was one of a family of strong women; her daughter Evelyn Rawlins already had a leading role in the Palmerston North musical community.

Assembled to enjoy Rawlins’ handiwork were the district’s most prominent suppliers of milk, the factory manager, various guests, and their unnamed wives.

Among the diners was the reporter from the Manawatu¯ Stan

dard. We can imagine that he will have been specially looking forward to the toasts.

The toast list was long and comprehensive – all the way from the King to the caterers, though apparently not the cows. It offered prospects of blunt words from speakers who lived too long ago to be toned down by a media handler.

Gallichan led off with a toast to the dairy industry. It was perhaps not so much a toast as a roast.

Gallichan severely criticised the butterfat yield of certain farmers’ cows. Too many farmers, he alleged, were keeping cows that did not pay for themselves and not even troubling to test their yield.

Some were importing sires that were not even from a milking stock.

It was time for farmers to up their game and for the government to step in by importing sires of the champion milking strains.

The temperature in the cooling room was rising. The next speaker, Herbert Hunt, president of the Rongotea branch of the Farmers’ Union and chairman of the board of the Rongotea Dairy Company, tried to dial it down somewhat.

He remarked that Gallichan ‘‘wanted too much all at once’’. Farmers needed more time to come round to his point of view. After all, organised herd testing in New Zealand had only begun that same year.

David Buick, MP for Palmerston North and a member of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, queried Gallichan’s assumption that the current government would do anything to assist breeders.

There would have been much to wrangle about as the banquet concluded.

A year later the Empire Cheese Factory held its first annual general meeting. Again Buchanan was in the chair and again Gallichan had much to say. In fact, to judge from the of September 12, 1910, he ‘‘occupied the floor for about an hour and made some insulting remarks’’.

Two days later he redoubled his insults, calling Buchanan ‘‘a sneak and a liar’’.

Buchanan concluded that Gallichan needed to be taught a sharp lesson. He lost little time in accosting him at the factory.

At the magistrate’s court in Palmerston North a few days later, Buchanan’s counsel said this was an honest piece of chastisement, meted out personally so as not to waste the time of the court.

Gallichan’s counsel replied that things could have ended badly for his client, as Buchanan was trying to fling him into the machinery.

The magistrate, Mr A D Thomson, ruled that Buchanan should have sought legal rather than pugilistic remedies. He ‘‘inflicted’’ a fine of £4, to include expenses of witnesses, together with solicitor’s fee of £1 1s.

A sum of £5 1s represented the price of a cow near calving in those days but still was hardly a crushing blow for a substantial farmer like Buchanan, who could afford multiple trips to the US, Canada and Scotland. Perhaps the learned magistrate was allowing for a certain provocation factor.

The hearing had hardly concluded before battle resumed in letters to the Gallichan boasted of his butterfat records. Buchanan dismissed them as ‘‘squirt’’. Gallichan defended his account as the ‘‘real mackay’’. There was no real peace in Tiakita¯huna until Gallichan left the district, around 1925.

When Winnard Milton Singleton, director of the dairy division of the Department of Agriculture, did a ‘‘state of the nation’’ statement about dairying in the of November 6, 1935, he accorded Manawatu¯ farmers special praise.

‘‘Palmerston North, which is still the headquarters of the New Zealand Jersey Cattle Breeders’ Association, was at one time the headquarters of all the principal breeders’ associations, and in fact witnessed the formation of most of them.’’

A Canadian who had immigrated to Aotearoa to enhance standards in the industry, Singleton specifically mentioned Gallichan and some other Tiakita¯huna breeders, though, sadly, not Buchanan.

Doubtless many factors played into the dairying success story in Tiakita¯huna and the wider Manawatu¯ – soil and climate, proximity to an important A&P Show, access to influential MPs, and contact with the State Farm at Weraroa, near Levin.

But to some extent, too, progress and eventual success must have been galvanised by spirited exchanges in the cooling room.