The Hastings Standard Published Daily. WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 1896. HELPING THE PRODUCERS.

Hastings Standard, Issue 9, 6 May 1896, Page 2

The Hastings Standard Published Daily.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 1896. HELPING THE PRODUCERS.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrongs that need resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can clo.

There is fashion in the political methods of the several colonics of Australasia. No sooner do we give women the franchise than there are not wanting imitators of our method. We initiate a policy of Government loans to farmers, and under another name the same methods are adopted in other colonies. Victoria is promised a State Bank, and we can make certain that New Zealand, will follow suit, although as a matter of fact the Bank of New Zealand though masquerading as a joint-stock concern, is so heavily pawned to the Colony that we might almost say it is a State hank. At one period the fashion was to pile up customs duties with a view to fostering local industries. The colonies were to he the great manufacturing centres of the world, and in all the colonies except New South Wales a manufacturer had only to show that such and such a thing could be manufactured in the colony and would find employment for so many hundred workers, and a duty was clapped on to meet the special case. If by increasing the protective duties, and thus playing into the hands of rings and syndicates, what mattered that so long as factories were built and industries started ?

Wo have in the past grossly neglected the only class in the community that may be said to require Government assistance. The producers of Australasia have not received the treatment they were fairly entitled to, but have been hampered by alleged protective duties, by the artificial upkeep of wages, and in other minor ways. The producers arc the mainstay of the colonies, for it is out of the produce of the soil that we find the means to pay the interest on our private and public indebtedness. It is by the sale of wool, frozen meat, hemp, kauri gum, tallow, hides, sheepskins and similar products that we find the money to meet our engagements. There is no export of manufactures ! We do not send away boots and shoes, woollen goods and other highly protected factory-made goods. The various colonial Governments have been slowly realising that to keep their respective colonies solvent they must help the producers to make production pay. This has become

platform of every party, and its effect when correctly applied must result in great benefit to all. We have seen in New Zealand the wonderful good of this new creed, in the grading of butter, in the cheapening of railage, in the establishment of a department of agriculture, in the practical lessons given to farmers in butter and cheese making and hints on fruit growing by specially selected experts. All these efforts of the Government, if wisely directed, cannot fail to be of great benefit to our fanners.

The Conference of Ministers of Agriculture held in Adelaide last week promises to result in a farther and more complete application of the principal "make production pay." The conference proposes federal or united action in the matter of the export of produce, and the recommendations that all meat shipped from Australasia should be sound and free from disease. That there should be a uniform system of inspecting and marking dairy produce &c., will, we think, meet with the approval of every right minded individual. The want of concerted action on the part of our producers, the absence of any system of uuiformity, and the uninviting and loose method of placing produce on the London market, lias lost us many thousands of pounds.

The decision of the Adelaide Conference, of the necessity of combined action for the better exploiting of the world's markets for Australasian produce, will, if it takes practical shape,be welcomed by the producers, for the cry lias been that new markets were needed to give better results. We believe that in federal action and judicious Government assistance, much good will result, and our producers will realise better prices than it lias been their lot to obtain during the past few years. At present New Zealand is outside the influence of the Conference ; but we may reasonably assume that the Government, which claims to have done so much for the producers, will fall in with the proposals of the Conference if found applicable to this colony.