QUOTA QUESTION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 45, 22 February 1934, Page 7

QUOTA QUESTION.

BRITISH INTENTION. "TO RESTRICT PRODUCTION." SIR JOHN ALLEN'S VIEWS. Tho statement that there are eight I • times as many people working on the land in England as there are inhabitants of New Zealand was made by Sir John Sandeman Allen, M.P., chairman of the Commercial Committee of the British House of Commons, in an address at a luncheon given in his honour yesterday by the Wellington Chamber of Commerce and the Royal Empire Society. Sir John prefaced his address by requesting that his remarks be understood in the spirit in which tliey were said. Half the trouble in the world to-day was due to the fact that nations had not understood one another. There was a great deal of trouble, he said, in the minds of important bodies of the community in New Zealand about the steps which the British Government were taking in the way of preserving and protecting agriculture at Home. Hitherto the people who worked on the land at Home had been deprived of everything, and had not had any vital help from the Government. At the present day, when they were almost at their lowest, it was essential that they be taken care of. He did not know how far it was realised in Ne\v Zealand that there were eight times as many people working on the land in England as there were inhabitants in this country. Therefore it was not merely a trifling thing that more than a quarter of the inhabitants of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should be. entirely unprotected. The main difficulty lay in the fall in prices, and, after all, nothing was going to be right until prices rose sufficiently to give a reasonable margiu of profit to enable people to live. "Must Not Be Terrified." The Government at Home was! undoubtedly determined to do something in the way of protecting the agriculture position by raising prices, and to do that they were controlling output. He personally wasi bitterly opposed to interference with trade in any shape or form, but there were times when it became the dominating factor for the Government to step in and interfere with it. At the present time he did not know what the British Government was going to do, but he had a fairly good idea that it intended to restrict production in England and abroad. The people of New Zealand must not be terrified at the idea of a quota. j Sir John said he had gone into the | exchange problem very closely, and hq was perfectly satisfied that as a main principle the whole thing was wrong. He was convinced that any idea of tinkering with currency would never really help in the long* ruu.