Grey River Argus TUESDAY, July 30, 1935. ATTRITION OR STABILITY?

Grey River Argus, 30 July 1935, Page 4

Grey River Argus TUESDAY, July 30, 1935. ATTRITION OR STABILITY?

. The statement in another column, by a member of the Labour Party, of the ease for assured returns to primary producers ■should leave no doubt of one thing. It is that the alternative is grave. The alternative is not merely instability, but an inevitable decline in primary industry by a process of attrition—the gradual elimination of those with small resources, of land and capital. The Meat Board rightly has stepped in to cheek yet a further growth of monopoly in the meat industry, but it has also the intention to cheek exports. The dairy farmer is in danger of being set back by those whose interest is primarily identified with manufacture, rather than with production. High exchange is an expedient that fails the exporter in proportion as his output is arbitrarily restricted or his over sea. price lowered by it. Another Member of the Labour Party has here been drawing attention to the ill effects upon all other sections of the patch-work policy with which the Government has met the depression. In reply, press apologists for that policy have naively said h e neglected to recognise the Government’s good intentions; but it is with these that Hell is said to be paved. The only criterion is results, one of which is that a great number of our exporters are now under a receivership, and all face th.' prospect of arrested farming development without any assurance of stability. The worst feature is that those in authority are go ing covertly about the process of cheeking expansion, proposing rationalisation, quality improvement, and economic dictatorship, the cumulative effect of which is obviously going to be the squeezing of many primary producers out of the market. There appears to be one interest which Government press apologists would exclude from the straitjacket into which the country is being shut, and it is that of the money lenders. There is rather more concern about assuring them of what toll they exact from exporters than of assuring exporters of their return from their produce. As for the position of the rest of the community, Mr J A. Lee has during his visit to the district demonstrated its gradual deterioration, and his critics have been quite unable to refute the declaration that New Zealand is progressing in no direct.on so much as in that of pauperism. It is said the credit of the Dominion remains abroad what it has been in the past, and that there is money to b c borrowed within the Dominion if there is security to offer. Does the Mortgage Corporation bear out this claim? Does it show that the country has the same security as formerly, when so much money is awaiting an outlet? Why, Mr Lee’s critics agree that any stability now existing is only temporary, . and that prices are below the ’

level at whieh a great many > farmers can hope to continue. Four years ago there was the assurance from the drifters that production has only to be in creased in order to improve the position, whereas they now act on the assumption that th e remedy lies precisely in the opposite direction. We are told that if the private tfttnopoly of control over publie credit is restricted confidence will be lessened, but where is the confidenc when producers are said not to be able to offer adequate security? Tin State has instituted a new lending organisation, and the reason is simply that the present private financial institutions are utterly failing to meet the needs of the situation. The substitute for those institutions is defective in being fashioned after them: bu + local critics of Labour’s plan for complete public control of public credit are prone to beg the question by quoting Mr Lang’s dis missal because he opposed th moneylenders and to deny that i'i American currency reform has had any effect upon the prices of primary products. Mr Lang’ ; policy was one thing and that of New Zealand Labour another i The American currency reform has unquestionably improved 11. i prices of farm products, bringhm I them in fact rather above thprices of manufaetuii rs. It is a ■ pretty poor attempt at aleiwu 1 ’ ’ ! against Labour to say its propos als for guaranteed prices and cur reney reform are only a design t‘ ensure for a Labour Govern ment possession of funds in banks. That is an utter misre presentation. The power ' creating credit is the bank mon opolv which requires to be cor rooted. It is the power which 1 taken in its full -ope. is teepii down the valiu- of the product of labour and land everywhere The issue of c ‘dil ails the t t urn of more than is btaine< 1 such credits, and thus it is that a lien is gradually established over the whole wealth of the community. Labour, when it :s ♦old money is cheap and plentiful but security is lacking, is able to reply that these conditions de monstrate a defective econonit" policy, but the strongest point in favour of Labour’s alternative policy. But the strongest point i to-day. despite the years of de pression and the hisses of nearlv II other people, the moneylend 'ng class have twice as big a hold on the country that they had a decade ago.