DIRECT SELLING BY FARMERS

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23043, 11 June 1940, Page 12

DIRECT SELLING BY FARMERS

TO TH* EDITOB OP THB PBBSS. Sir,—The outburst of Mr Coop, retiring president of the North Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Farmers' Union, about direct selling by farmers, is full of ambiguities. In the first place direct selling by farmers is a distinct contradiction in terms, because in the majority of cases the heavy mortgages upon farm properties held by banks and stock and station agents would still conscript the sale of all the farm production through those banks and stock agents, etc. Yet Mr Coop, probably unaware of the sad history of such selling previous to 1935, when well over, 50 per cent, of New Zealand farmers were on the verge of bankruptcy, would, if he had his way, go back to the same sorry system. I know, as do thousands of others, that the vibrations of the splendid marketing system inaugurated by the Government and functioning beneficially in all its branches, have become too tense for certain vested interests within and without the Farmers' Union, but with this nation at war this Governmental department is able readily to provide Great Britain with large quantities of food, etc., and, what is important, divorced from that orgy of profiteering which persistently prevailed during the last great war. It is, indeed, puzzling to find Mr Coop, and a few noisy individuals, formulating stupid proposals at this juncture, which only serve to hamper the Government in its gigantic, genuine, win-the-war effort, and this notwithstanding that the New Zealand Farmers* Union has told the people of New Zealand and Great Britain that all the farmers in New Zealand are solidly behind the Government in its splendid .war effort. I would advise Mr Coop and his noisy comrades to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the sub-leader, "HumourMongers," which appears in "The

Press” to-day, and leave until the end of the war any “axes they may have to grind.”—Yours, etc.. J« HXIfU. Hundalee, June 8, 1940.