WHEAT AND FLOUR.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19201, 6 January 1928, Page 7

WHEAT AND FLOUR.

to Tirt cinrda.or th« mess,

Sir,—You do the Wheat Committee and myself too much honour when you state that wo oould "easily" havo arranged with the Government to fix a local prioe of Us fid for wheat. Once more, I must say that for months we have been pressing the Government to state what the equivalent figure for wheat likely to be obtainable as she result of the new duties, was worked out to by mutual agreement between the Wheat Committee and the Government, and also to do other thiiigi which would have established the j>rico per bushel aa between miller and grower, but «*e could not get this, let alone a fixed price. It is tli6refor-3 no use flogging tliat partioular regi'tablo any more, whether you call it a turnip, or I a carrot.

You state. w6 bould have got tho Government to fix ft local price for wheat; we state we oould not. and that we, got everything we coula get, and that what we did get has raised tho price w:hiah the New Zealand wlieatgrower will receive far above world s parity and that it is splendid protection, much higher than ( Is rereceived by any wlieatgrower in any other part of the world. I have now finished with that question and think that niy friends, the wheatgrowere, Will cfecjit my statement in spite ofyftur Attempts to cast doubt .upoH it. However time Will tell. With regard to your own plan; besides being unattainable, it WAS no good! It would have resulted in cutting off the wheatgrowers's - nose to spite tha miller's face. You hard forced us to state this and appear to disagrW with you wheh we would rather not have done so, remembering how persistently you have worked in prising forward the needs of the wheatgrower. Moreover, we would probflWy not have gained thd present vxc6llen(< protection for the grower had not you and others given strong assistance to the general propaganda. But this does not justify you in stating that our part of the team has been working for th 6 miller and not for the wlieatgrower. Such A statement would be false. "We knew from the first that the menace to our wheatgrower was cheap imported flour; liotv ofteu have .1 stated ifcP—and that in getting this menace removed we were unavoidably protecting the milter. But whereas we were formerly obliged to accept the miller's statement that thk fear of imported flour weakened and sometimes crippled his wheat-buying strength; now, having obtained the sliding scale of import duties, that extraneous argument vanishes, and the miller must give a fair parity with the price of flour for the wheat he buys, because New Zealand wheat is no longer menaced from outside.

This particular misfortune of cheap imported flour made millers mid wheatgrowers bedfellows. T hoped that the common relief to both of them might hare led to a better understanding between them, for there are many ways in which they can help each other; and as a last word, T still hope so.— Yotir9, etc., \VM. MACHIN. January 4th. [This is the letter to which reference was made in an article in Tm Press of yesterday, and which was inadvertently omitted.—Ed., 'l'se Press.]