TARIFF REVISION

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 70, 24 March 1933, Page 6

TARIFF REVISION

MANUFACTURERS AND

FARMERS

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—Fanners' representatives and propagandists appear to have very sensitive skins. Judging by the reckless manner in which, they continually attack other sections of the community, one might imagine that they themselves would ;bo capable of bearing criticism. But evidently it is not so. Any reference, however temperate, to the £12,000,000 subsidies and concessions enjoyed by the farm industries, or any gentle-reminder that those responsible for guiding the farmers must share some, responsibility, for the disastrous plight into which the farm industries have been- allowed blindly to drift—and the whole atmosphere is full of squeals. . In this evening's "Post?' there appears a letter from Mr. A. J. Heighway in protest against my mildly critical comments on the recent utterances of Mr. Goodfellow. Mr. Heighway seems to imagine— like Mr. Goodfellow^-that the New.Zealand Manufacturers' Federation is in some way responsible for the Government's not having yet commenced the tariff inquiry. In my recent statement I suggested that possibly the United Kingdom manufacturers were not yet ready, and that the inquiry was being held up at the request of the British Trade Commissioner. Whether or not this is so, I cannot definitely say; but it is widely understood to be the case.

Mr. Heighway cannot have read my previous statement very carefully, or he would not suggest that I had charged Mr. Goodfellow and Mr. Poison with responsibility for the present glutted market in farm produce. What I did say was that the leaders of the farming industries (whoso duty it surely -was to watch the trend of developments and the increasing production of our competitors) must accept responsibility for having allowed our farmers to drift blindly into this glutted market. I also suggested that the tanners leaders are now attacking the manufacturers only in order, to distract the attention of the farming farmers from tile, way in which their affairs have been muddled and allowed to drift so disastrously by the leaders of. the farming industry. . * . ■ , WiU Mr, Heighway please explain how the effects of high exchange could be counteracted by the reduction of Customs duties on the 54 per cent, of ex-British imports which are at present admitted duty free? Only one other point: In my last statement I made a distinction between the farming farmers and the talking farmers w y I re Peat that the manufacturers of New Zealand have deep and sincere sympathy with the farming farmers in their present , difficulties—difficulties ■ which in many cases are as great as those which confront the manufacturers themselves Moreover, we know that the farming farmers—as hundreds >of them have told us-do not support their spokesmen in the attack upon manufacturers. They understand perfectly well that the .expansion £L m?r fact™n S ]n New Zealand offers now the only hope of absorbing the unemployed, providing a livelihood for our increasing populatwn, and preventing a general collapse of our economic fitructee It

•March-03. CAMPBELL.