‘POST’ IS SARCASTIC

Evening Star, Issue 21037, 26 February 1932, Page 7

‘POST ’ IS SARCASTIC

SLY DIG AT OTAGO FARMERS

[Special to the ‘Stab.’]

WELLINGTON, February 25. Says the ‘Post’_ editorially; “The Otago Farmers’ Union is not strong in sense of humour. If it were it would not have provided two of the best bits of humour put forward seriously in Hie exchange controversy. The first joke was in the resolution that a strong telegram be sent to the Government. The resolution endorsed the action of the primary and other organisations in pressing for free exchange and deprecated the propaganda at present being prompted to cloud the issue and misrepresent the position. How any meeting endorsing the organised propagandist efforts of the primary producers can in the same breath deprecate propaganda passes comprehension; but more delightfully humorous still was the text of the rebuke given to the other side: ‘ The Otago farmers strongly object to providing cheap credits in London for overbuilt cities which have recklessly borrowed overseas.’ Having thus put itself on the right side as a champion of prudent finance, castigators of reckless borrowers, and a righteous judge decreeing that those who borrowed must pay their own way, the union proceeded to consider debts, and resolved that there should be an arbitrary reduction in all interest charges. One might have thought the union bad relented, and, after rebuking the reckless overbuilt cities, bad decided that they should bo helped; but this was not so. In its advocacy of interest reduction the meeting was dealing with farmers’ debts. Or course, that changed , the whole business. Reckless borrowing cities should expect no quarter, though they were not excluded lest, in spite of their reckless borrowing, the money should all flow to them; but when the farmer borrowed—well, surely it was not necessary to point out the difference.”