HOW LONG?

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20074, 21 October 1939, Page 10

HOW LONG?

WOOL COMMANDEER FARMERS APPREHENSIVE GOVERNMENT’S ACTION FIXED PRICE POLICY The anxiety of Gisborne districtfarmers to ascertain for what period the wool commandeer, or rather the fixed price principle, would last in New Zealand was demonstrated at a meeting of the Poverty Bay provincial executive of the Farmers’ Union yesterday afternoon. Farmers realised that the buying of the wool by the British Government would conclude after the purchase of one clip following the war, but the meeting did not know the New Zealand Government’s intentions. Members feared, in the absence of information. that the Government might intend to make the war an excuse for a permanent fixed price scheme, even after the conclusion of hostilities.

Mr. S. D. Reeves, a Gisborne district representative on the Meat Board’s electoral committee, was asked his opinion on the matter of meat supplies, and he said that he had no information regarding meat or wool.

Before tile meeting was a letter from the Otago provincial executive, stating that while the farmers were prepared to do their full share to prosecute the war they were determined to resist to the utmost the socialisation of their industry, and demanded an assurance that the Government handling of wool and frozenmeat during the war would be confined strictly to the period of hostilities and to a brief period after. A portion of a resolution adopted in Otago was endorsed by the Poverty Bay executive, as follows: —“That this meeting demands that the authorised representatives of the primary produce bodies be consulted and be actively associated with the overseas marketing arrangements for our produce, and that they be given representation upon the central organisation set up by the Government to control products.”