Millers and Farmers.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18635, 9 March 1926, Page 8

Millers and Farmers.

It is a little' too late for millers to offer, as Mr R. Milligan did last week, to submit their books to the scrutiny of experts appointed either by the Board of Trade or by the Farmers' Union. Neither an accountant nor anybody else could say, without being put in possession of facts which the millers have not the least intention of supplying, how much there was in milling last year or any year, or will be this year if farmers get the price i they are entitled to. "VVe assume, how- . ever, that they were competent accountants who prepared the balance-sheet ' on which the directors of a South Can--1 terbury Milling Company decided the 'Other day to pay a dividend to the shareholders of 15 per cent., and it is not necessary to be an accountant to know that if Australian millers can pay 6s per bushel for wheat and sell flour at £l4 per ton, New Zealand i millers can pay a good deal more than they are offering if they are to get! £lB for their flour. Mr Million's statement, temperate though it ia in tcme, is just another proof of the millers' determination to break the market. It is an attempt to terrify farmers into selling at the millers' own terms, and as such is an assault on the declared policy of the Government that wheat-growing is an essential industry. Milling is also an essential industry, and if the millers were willing to make some contribution to the stabilisation of wheat-growing, the public would be a little more ready to listen to their talk about losses. But they are maintaining an* attitude of calculated selfishness in a situation in which the great public need is to convince farmers that wheat-growing is worth while. Milling has remained, worth while to every miller who has not been incompetent, and if the policy now adopted by the Government means that it will be a little less worth while this year than it was last year, the fault is their own. We have pointed out before that there would probably have been no agitation for a free market for this season's crop if the-millers had been far-seeing enough in December to offer such terms as they were proposing to give four or five weeks ago. In any case the essential fact is that the farmer should not be-robbed of the price his wheat is now really worth, and of the confidence the Government has set out to give him in the profitableness of wheat pro-1 duction. .He will not be robbed if he sits tight, since whatever the millers may threaten to do, the alternative to buying his wheat at its real value now will be buying Australian wheat a little ! later at something substantially above ' that value.