THE FARMER'S POSITION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 201, 26 August 1935, Page 6

THE FARMER'S POSITION.

PRICES AND LAND VALUES. (To the Editor.) With all this comment about exchange rate «oing on in the paper it seems to me it is time a chair of exchange was set up at our universities. That it is a science there is no doubt, because no one seems to understand it; at least not in New Zealand. Mr. W. Gray, Mr. Forbes and quite a lot of the National Government are absolutely sure that by raisin f the exchange the primary producer was saved from financial disaster. I think rather the farmer's mortgagee was saved from having the value of his assets halved, hence the sofid support the rise was given. Rider Haggard before the war &aid our land values were 23 per cent above their real value; he was partly right then, but what would he say to-day? The day of reckoning is '-oir.ing. The exchange rate only stalled it oft* a ittle longer. How is it that when butter was only 6d per lb about the year 1908 farmers (now I'm speaking from my own knowledge of conditions in* Otago about that .late) were not in perpetual fear of bein-: emptied out of their farms? No, the sale of a farm in those days wbs a hard-headed bargain and most farmers had a sense of surety that they were in well below the land's prospective value, and as for a boom, they coi'.M not imagine such a thing. What you made you worked hard for. The man who most surprises me in this exchange business is Mr. Forbes. To think that he can't smell a rat. I don't think for one moment he would have supported raising the exchange if he had not got mixed up with the Reformers. BAI GOOM.