THE WHEAT DUTIES

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 20, 24 July 1934, Page 8

THE WHEAT DUTIES

(To the Editor.)

Sit,—-It is to -be feared .tliat the Tariff Commission presented an opportunity.for some of its;: members parad-. ing their economic theories -ratherthan providing^ -tribunal for the practical analysiSiOf plain facts. ILovr' other can Professor- Murphy's statement regard-, ing the "uneconomic values'? of. wheat land be.interpreted? It is obvious that he did nQt pay the (slightest attention to the evidence submitted on that aspect. That evidence showed that wheat land, with free-of-duty wheat coming in,; would have practically no productive, value at aIL The evidence showed that many landlords and second mortgagees were, receiving only a fraction of their rents and interest,.and in many cases nphe at all. Anyone who knowß anything about the values of wheat-growing lands knows that those values have depreciated very substantially during the currency of the duties. The. theory in this instance is suspiciously like some of the text-book matter that emanated some time ago from the Auckland Chamber of Commerce. | The6e economists want to ■ get a new

book—the old one has the borer. Pretty theories will not stand up to the "hard facts of practical experience, which the professor and his colleagues would have discovered for themselves had they found the time to visit one of the 6500 wheat farms in the country, and left out one of the 200 t'actoiics that they apparently could not tear themselves away from.—l am, etc«, R. ANN AND. Chris'tchurck, July 23, 1931.