Evening Post. FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1921. BAD WEATHER AT THE CROSS-ROADS

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 66, 18 March 1921, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1921. BAD WEATHER AT THE CROSS-ROADS

In these days when .newspapers are plentifully supplied with such head-lines as " Another Fall in Meat," " Rout of Stock-markets Partly Checked," " Farmers Resent Taxation," " Prospect of Unemployment," and others of that description, it Becomes more and more important to recognise the thread of common interest that runs through all the diverse and sometimes conflicting aims of the various sections of the community. A family faced with the possibility of a workless winter may be pardoned for feeling more concern in the downward course of retail meat prices than in checking the fall of the stock and hides markets; and a farmer Heavily impressed with the latter calamity will be only human if he reproaches the tax-gatherer and the interest-col-lector. But the positions of farmer and worker arc sufficiently interdependent to justify each in considering the hardness of the other's lot as well as that of his own. In the long run no one would benefit by a disastrous slump in tha stock market, productive of cheap meat ballasted with rural bankruptcy; nor would rural ends be .served by a policy of tax-remission and retrenchment flooding the cities with unemployed, for whom no public work would be possible for lack of money. The thread of mutual interest necessitates a" tolerant, helpful spirit; a co-operation that is even more necessary in adversity than in prosperity. Burdens that cannot be shouldered off become far lighter when borne with good-will. A sectional demand for more wages, or for less taxes, or for higher (or lower) .prices, represents, in itself, a revolt against an obligation which is only part of a complicated whole—a revolt which, if successful, would temporarily shift the burden; but, so complete is the interdependence of the economic system, the burden would rebound. Scratch, one social-economic unit, and it will somehow or other bits the next .one, until the injury has gone round the whole circuit and has returned whence it started. That is a "vicious circle" the only cure for which is mutual good-will and some idea, of social service.

Ashburton records (per Press Association telegram) a reduction in the wages of farm workers, who seem to have accepted it philosophically because the end of the threshing season is near and there is a prospect of an over-sup-ply of labour in' winter. Ashburton also records that the Assistant-Inspector of Hospitals, when faced with a hospitalbuilding programme to cost £2^ooo, made the significant reply: " I have just returned from Central Otago, where sheep were selling at 9s a dozen." It is not difficult herein to trace the thread of common interest, and to see that if sacrifices are not shared evenly and in good spirit, their total burden may be intensified j may, indeed, for lack of cooperation, become a crushing weight. Productive capital and productive labour—if not preyed upon by intermediate, distributive interests—have so much in common that it is unprofitable for them to wrangle or to fight; and the same thing is true of town and country. Though the farmer has had a set-back, it is too soon to cry out for ] tax-relief at the cost of a drastic cut in public services and public works. In New Zealand i& is an unwritten principle that public works which, from the weather point of view, could be carried out better in summer, are left till winter or till a sufficient supply of seasonal labour has been released from the farms. In a country where "labour is scarce and dear, that arrangement benefits the farmer; there is perhaps some ground for contending that, where labour-cost ip. the predominant factor in the work, it also makes for economy in public works; 1 and, whether that be so or not, it certainly makes for politicosocial tranquillity. Therefore, the gen-j era! welfare would not be served by too | drastic a cut in revenue and in public works commitments, on the eve of a winter which may not prove as critical as some people fear, but which will certainly be more serious, in the indus-trial-commercial aspect, than its recent forerunners. In a case before the Christchurch Supreme Court, in the course of which a land agent expressed tho opinion that it is impossible to say to-day what land values are, the Judge is reported to have spoken in similar terms, and to have said that "the present condition of the market is no criterion at all either as regards stock or land. People are holding, and do not know what is going to happen." Also, they do not know whether they will be able to continue to hold. No one knows whether the deprelsion will go just deep enough to be a useful corrective of extravagance, or whether it will sink to bed-rock. But to assume tho latter, at the present I stage, would be quite unwarranted; and the present is also no time for any section of the community to seek commercial or political salvage at the expense of the other sections. It is everybody's duty to stick to the .ship, stand at his ■ station, &&4 y,g t^ weathe* 'Jtowi& " '' J