TWO VERSIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 112, 7 November 1935, Page 22

TWO VERSIONS

GUARANTEED PRICES

WARNING TO CITIES

Labour's policy of guaranteed prices, for farmers was attacked by Mr. O. C. J Mazengarb, Nationalist candidate for | Wellington East, when addressing a meeting of electors at St. Jude's Hall, Lyall Bay, last night. He described the scheme as impracticable and impossible, and one which would build up prosperity for the farmer at the expense of the people in the cities. Stating that the Labour Party intended to carry out its policy by means of inflation and control of the currency, Mr. Mazengarb said that the farmer had had quite enough already. The people in the cities had been supporting him long enough. He had been called "the backbone of the cpuntry," | but there were ribs and other bones in the human body which needed nourishment as well.

"The legs of the taxpayer have been very nobly carrying the backbone until they have become almost bandylegged in the process," declared Mr. Mazengarb.

Mr. Mazengarb pointed out that the way in which the case for guaranteed prices was being presented to farmers in the country was very different from the way it was being put by Labour speakers in the cities. In the cities great emphasis was placed on the fact that this guaranteed price was only a repayable advance, which would have to be repaid to the Government when prices went up. Yet' a Labour member in Auckland, when a farmer put this idea before him, said that the advance was not repayable, and the position had been misrepresented.

A challenge was thrown out by the candidate to Mr. R. Semple, the Labour candidate, to say where the money was coming from to give the farmers guaranteed prices, and a guaranteed income to the workers in the city.

"The real intention of the Labour Party is to inflate the currency for the benefit of the farmers of the country and increase the burden of taxation," said Mr. Mazengarb.

Mr. Mazengarb said he believed the most serious issue before the country at the present time was the question of currency inflation, because never before had there been a situation in which a party had come before the country and proposed to inflate the currency.

The question of currency inflation was dealt with at some length by the candidate, who said that in the depression the minds of a number of people turned almost automatically to monetary reform and a system of currency inflation ay a means of getting out of the difficulties created for us. The direct cause of the present difficulties was the ease with which money had been borro ved and lent after the war. Inflation ol currency during the war was largelj the cause of the present trouble, an 1 if that was the case, how was the country going to get ou". of trouble by further inflation? "I do

ask you in the interests of yourselves,

as people '.vho live in towns, to set your faces rigidly and firmly against any proposal for inflation of the currency," saiil Mr. Mazengarb. "I can say e,mphalicaly that there has never been any period of inflation that has not reacted against the people who tried it, ami against the people whose interests it was intended to protect." Mr. J. Robertson. Labour candidate the meeting, which was attended by nearly 80 electors. After the candidate had answered a number of questions, he was accorded a vole of confidence by acclamation.