THE SMALL FARMER AND THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22109, 3 June 1937, Page 8

THE SMALL FARMER AND THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT

TO I'BB EOITOH or THE ITIES3 Sir,—Mr Barclay claims support for the Labour Government because bis interest uul is lower, and it is a common habit to decry the last Government as one tnat looned to the interest of tne moneylending class. The last Government m tlie aepth of the depression enacted farrcacnxug legislation. it instituted the Reserve Bpnk, negotiated the Ottawa agreement, raised exchange and compulsorily lowered Interest rates—all fari caching contributions to helping tne farmer out of the depression, and the country as well. The legislation of tne nabour Party has artificially raised all operating costs and living costs as wen. It is questionable if the great body of working men, when such things are considered, have as much buying power today as they would have enjoyed hj much of the Laoour legislation had never been passed. Mr Baldwin, speaking the other night, told his hearers that tne British Empire cannot be governed by logic, nor can it be put into a strait-jacket without danger cf strangling. It seems to me that the many regulations under which a man may neither sell his own labour, nor in many cases his produce, without obeying some Government regulation, mean that we Hew Zealanders are in need of his warning. labour legislators appear to think that in their relations one with another New Zealanders cannot be trusted to deal fairly or to safeguard their own interests. Hence wo have a mass of Icg.slatlon which big industrial nations woma never contemplate, and which has the effect of stultifying labour employing enterprise and so limiting the very activities which should make for the happy conditions all parties desire.—Yours, etc., J .T, , June 2. 1937. [Subject to the right of reply of S. S. Barclay and J. Hill, this correspondence is now closed.—Ed., “The Press."]