WHEAT, BREAD, AND LAND

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 105, 6 May 1931, Page 3

WHEAT, BREAD, AND LAND

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Yet once more have the iniquitous wheat and flour duties been brought up for discussion. The recent debate in Parliament was instructing, yet inconclusive and disappointing. It seems there are yet many people who believe that omelettes may bo had without breaking -eggs. We may set aside as exaggerations such statements as "depriving the farmer of his livelihood," "throwing hundreds out of work," etc. The remark, also, of the member for Lyttelton that the Dominion would bo a loser to the extent of £2,000,00.0 per annum, is a sheer absurdity. So far from this being the ease/the Dominion's present annual loss arising from the retention of the wheat and flour duties is, taking our consumption of wheat at.5,000,000 bushels per annum and allowing a difference of only 3s a bushel between local and import prices, not less than £1,200,000. If, as was asserted, £900,000 is annually paid as wages in the production of wheat and flour (which is greatly exaggerated), it would still pay the Dominion handsomely to repeal the wheat and flour duties, and continue to pay these wages for doing nothing. The money saved to our people by purchasing cheaper bread would be spent on other commodities and the resultant increased employment of labour would more than offset that displaced from wheat cultivation. The purchase of wheat from Australia must, in spite of tariffs, result in reciprocal trade; for goods must be paid for with goods, Therefore increased employment could be looked for in those occupations through which our wheat bill must be redeemed. . Further, the wheat lands could easily be converted 'back 'to pasture, and, at a lower value per acre (in which,.of course, lies the sting) be made to produce butter, cheese, lamb, and mutton at a real profit to the- community. The statement made by the member for Oamaru that over £30,000,000 is invested in the wheat industry is preposterous. The Year Book gives the value of land, buildings, and machinery devoted to the production.of flour, oattaeal, etc., as about £800,000. The £30,000,000, then, must bo assumed to be the value of the (approximately) 825,000 acres of land used in wheat production, with the further assumption that, without wheat cultivation, this land is valueless. It requires no skill either in figures or farming to expose the worthlessness of this reasoning. While the best sheep land runs to about £10 per acre, and good dairy land may be bought for £30 per acre, the price\>f wheat land works out at about £120 |)er acre. ,, It is monstrous that a whole community should be taxed to maintain such utterly fictitious values. Beading the debate, one is struck by the fact that the supporters "of the Wheat and flour duties are, overwhelmingly, Southern members. Whether United, Reform, or Labour members, they found themselves on a common platform. This fact, that a vested interest has power to cut athwart all party ties, and thus to foil the legitimate wishes of the great majority of the people, should excite the deepest resentment. This is especially so when considering the rail-sitting attitude of the Labour Party. Time was when the Labour Party founded its case on ethics; but ambition, guided by sophistry and the art of casuistry, has brought it to such a pass that its ethics are decidedly of more questionable Value to-day than; those of either. of the two other parties it would supplant. A further illustration of the evolution of Labour ethics was given by the discussion on cheap fertilisers " for impoverished farmers, the Labour members easily outbidding the United and Reform members in their anxiety to tax the general community for the benefit of the landed interests, utterly disregarding the long years of frantic land speculation which finally brought so many of them to disaster. What a contrast there is between the British Labour Party with its resolute adherence to free trade, together with the just announced intention of the Chancellor to institute a system of land values taxation, as compared with the New Zealand Labour Party's clamourings for more and higher protective duties, and their apparent devotion to the cause of land monopoly.—l am, etc., B. A. GOSSE.