(To the Editor.)

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 110, 5 November 1935, Page 8

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Sir William Hunt, in addressing the Auckland Rotary Club yesterday, is reported to have said: "Of all the things done in New Zealand to help th? farmers probably none had been criticised so freely as the raising of the exchange rate." If he said that he is indubitably correct. But why? 81-. cause it was (and is) an iniquitous toil taken of all the people for some of the people. lam positive that the Auckland Rotarians, as business men, listened with courtesy to Sir William, but were not convinced. Just now torrents of talk on the New Zealand exchange rate are flooding the land; but the issue is as simple as it is barefaced. If the farmer has been assisted, as Mr. Macmillan, Minister for Agriculture says lie is, by the exchange, where did, where can, the money for that assistance come from? There is only one answer: out of the pockets of the community. Permit me to enumerate seven ways in which the farmer has been helped at the expense of the community, as quoted by Mr. Macmillan. 1. Subsidised purchase of fertilisers. 2. Reduction in interest rales (at the i

expense of lenders). .'3. Reduction of counties interest on

loans (at the expense of lenders) 4. Reduction of railway rates on farmers' produce (£145.000),

5. Assistance to farmers from unemployed fund (£250,000, at the expense of every unemployment tax payer). 6. Assistance 4° counties from unemployed fund (£900,000 from every unemployment tax payer). 7. Raising the rate of exchange (at the expense of the whole . community) .

Who paid for all this—it must be paid for by someone? The community! In a nutshell, exchange is a tax. toll, or levy, and a very heavy one,- imposed directly and indirectly on the- community for the farmer. It has established a precedent, a very bad precedent, and it must bring retribution.— I am, etc., HELOT.