The Press Tuesday, April 5, 1927. The Wheat Question.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18968, 5 April 1927, Page 8

The Press Tuesday, April 5, 1927. The Wheat Question.

In the letter which we printed yesterday Mr David Jones quoted some figures which, id! they can be maintained, demonstrate very clearly that the millers can well afford to pay much more for wheat than they are paying. Last May the representative of Distributors Ltd. said that with flour at £lB a ton Gs Sd could be given for wheat. Mr Jones has calculated, using the same basis as Distributors Ltd., that the millers could pay 6s Id to-day and sell flour at the current rate. " The millers," he adds,. " constantly '•' say that they desire the farmer to gel "all his wheat is worth and thus cn- " courage him to keep in the industry. " Now what are they prepared to do " to assist the farmer in getting what " they say wheat is worth, Gs Id '"f.o.b.?"* The millers will say, perhaps, that it is not their business to deal in gratuitous philanthropy, and that they are entitled to buy as cheaply and sell as dearly as they can. which is, indeed, what they do. Nor, since that is the rule in all commerce, and the practice of. nearly everyone in the world, can they hj" blamed for observing it. They have nevertheless contracted a moral obligation to assist the growers who assisted them, and without whose goodwill there could not have been obtained the Prime Minister's promise to raise the present duty on flour by £l. Moreover, it is unwise and shortsighted to treat the growers as people who should be exploited instead of allies whose co-operation will be needed in the future. Mr Jones says that " it is quite evident that un"less the price of wheat is increased. " the Board of Trade must intervene " and reduce the price of flour and "bread." This is not quite evident, but Mr Jones is certainly right in thinking that the Government will not be able indefinitely, or for very long, to remain a mere spectator while millers and bakers, are making good profits at the expense of the men who grow the wheat. Public sympathy is with the actual producer, and public feeling has its own means of making itself effective —a fact of which s Government is aware if the millers and bakers are not. # While the millers are thinking the matter over, the growers and their friends ought to address themselves to the finding of some prac-. tical method of stabilising prices. The financial problem is a difficult one, but it ought not to be impossible for a representative and responsible conference, such as Mr Jones suggests to arrange for advances on unsold wheat.

prevalence of "saloon" drinking ••'with its provocation to violence and " its injury to health " that enabled a minority to stampede the nation into accepting a drastic and doubtful remedy. Because there is no real counterpart in Britain to the saloon, and because the drinking habits of the people show a steady improvement, the writer concludes that Prohibition may be ruled out for Britain as not practical politics. The same arguments apply in this country, where the declining Prohibition vote is simply an ndieation Unit the Prohibitionists have failed to persuade us that we are in danger of becoming a nation of drunk-