Socialistic Legislation

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 157, 31 March 1937, Page 13

Socialistic Legislation

Sir,—l note “A.H.V.’s” letter in your valuable paper of March 24, in which he tells us that the Labour Government has lot us down. Any unbiased, sane man can see that our urban and rural, plus commercial community, are busy making hay and quite happy that the silver lining is here with us. There is no reason why farm labourers should not be paid a decent wage. The blame falls on the farmer’s unbusinesslike figuring of overhead costs, including high prices paid for land. There may cone a day when the farmer will have some recognised organisation or council which will assist him when buying land and give him scientific details of the quality and the power of productivity of his intended purchase and thus take the gamble out of farming. We know that we have in our farming and commercial community those who iove a gamble, and they are the first ones to squeal when the gamble is against them.

Freda Utley, writing about rural Japan, says: “The unsolved agrarian problem makes Japan’s social structure a foundation built on sand and totally unfit to weather the storm of war. Nearly half the population works under a semi-medieval system of social relationships. The peasants, two-thirds of whom are tenants, pay rents in kind to a million landowners. These rents —which constitute a fixed quantity of rice per acre —amount to between 50 to 60 per cent, of the yield even in years of good harvest, and the landowners are entirely parasitic, since they supply neither seed nor stock nor manure, nor undertake repairs, drainage or irrigation works. They provide no capital to develop the land and modernise the technique of agriculture, they just draw their certain quantity of rice from the overburdened peasants. The latter, while thus subject to a feudal form of exploitation by the landowners, are at the same time forced to pay tribute to large-scale modern industry in the shape of the big monopoly business houses which control the production and distribution of chemical fertilisers. The cost of fertilisers now comes to about a quarter of the selling price of rice even for peasant proprietors. The peasant proprietors bear such a load of debt at usurious rates of interest that the position of the majority is little if at all better than that of the tenants.” How do we compare with the above state of affairs? I know of dairy-farmers who have five and six mortgages, at usurious rates of interest; of farmers who would have been only too pleased to have paid their interest in butterfat instead of cash during the depression. The Labour Government has done more for the farmer than the previous party, by cutting out the five years budgetary system, while the guaranteed price is only a bridge to give the farmers a sure return for their season’s work. The farmers will not forget the Labour Government for action instead of procrastination. Y’our correspondent suggests that if the Labour Government had reduced taxation and not increased wages and shortened hours, the purchasing power would have increased and prosperity would have been with us. We find that Britain as well as New Zealand has to increase taxation for various national reasons, and taxation is only the charge; the tax provides for his own protection. As your correspondent suggests that wages would have been increased had taxation been kept down, I have yet to meet a business section of the corjimunity that will increase wages because our taxation has been reduced by 5 per cent or 10 per. cent, on the profits for the year.—l am, etc.,

WORKING FARMER. Palmerston North, March 29.