THE SMALL FARMER AND THE LABOUR PARTY

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22112, 7 June 1937, Page 4

THE SMALL FARMER AND THE LABOUR PARTY

TO THE EDITOR Or THIS PBES3. Sir, —As I pointed out in an earlier letter, which surely "J.T." read, the last Government only brought down Interest long after It had cut wages. The Reserve Bank was useless to help farmers till the Labour Party got control of it and made it a State bank in fact as well as name. At Ottawa, New Zealand certainly did not receive anything that the other States of the Empire received. As for the exchange, this would have risen without any help from the Government when Australia pegged hers up, but the Forbes Government then set its face against letting it rise. Afterwards it was certainly pegged up; but this was a poor way of helping the small farmer compared with the guaranteed price for his produce, as with a high exchange the man that needs least gets more, and the one that needs most gets least. "J.T." seems to think that, because Mr Baldwin saya the British Empire cannot

be ruled by • logic, his party can also do without logic, and that the working men and small farmers would be better off with low wages and high interest than they are at present under the Labour Government.—Yours, etc., S. S. BARCLAY. Little River. June 4. 1937. [J. Hill may still reply. Otherwise this correspondence is closed.—Ed„ "The Press."]