WHY DEAR BUTTER ?

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 49, 27 February 1937, Page 8

WHY DEAR BUTTER ?

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —In the "Evening Post" of Febr ruary 16 appeared a letter signed by "A Guaranteed Worker," asking tha reason why butter was retailing at Is 4d on the New Zealand market and lid in London. The reason for this is that before the guaranteed price operated butter was sold cheaper here than anywhere else, not in money, but comparative values, which amount to the same thing. But now tha price is on a. par with the London price. The dairy farmer sold a pound of butter in England for lid and he-bought lid worth of English goods, but when those same goods arrived in New Zealand, to the farmer's consternation, they cost him Is 4d, due to taxes, tariffs, and hosts of other trade barriers designed to protect local uneconomic industry. Therefore, the farmer was giving 5d per lb of butter for no useful purpose. This meant that, to balance the disparity between the cost of production and the selling price, he wanted 5d alb mo- -. Unfortunately, Londoners were not prepared to pay recompense, with the result that within the last four years one million acres Of land have gone out of cultivation. This is ground that has become unprofitable to farm through high tariffs. In a desperate attempt to save himself the farmer has doubled his production and steadily increased the individual butter-fat record of his cows from less and less cultivated country. i Even then he was on the verge of collapse and so he was granted a small lift, just enough to keep his head above the water, by the pegged exchange. Butter sold on the local market' is now selling at its correct value, but the local market consumes only a portion. Farmers must receive compensation, bearing in mind relations between costs and prices, for all their produce, in view of the increased costs of production. This is merely social justice, seeing that the worker's wages have been increased enough to more than cover increased living expenses. The farmers are still clamouring for world parity or, what it really is, free trade, and in the near future their clamourings will take a more definite form than hitherto. The working class cannot have world parity in the price of foodstuffs because of import restrictions imposed by the Government in a mistaken view that to bolster up industries that cannot stand on their own feet creates employment. If the working man backs the farmer in his campaign for free trade he will be 100 per cent, better off than he is now~ I am, etc., B. A. BARTHOLOMEW. Levin, February 23.