AMERICAN FARMERS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXXII, Issue 2768, 28 August 1931, Page 5

AMERICAN FARMERS.

FEELING THE DEPRESSION. PETROL FOR NOTHING! Wheat farmers in Canada and the United States were feeling th? depression very acutely, said .' Mr J. Ellis, a Wellington business man, who returned by the Maunganui from San Francisco. Mr Ellis said that it was costing the farmer almost as much to produce the wheat as they got for it. The market price for wheat when he left the country was 40 cents a bushel, and unless a man were farming in a big way he could scarcely make aliving. “They are very optimistic about an early recovery, but I don’t see how that is possible when there arte nearly ten millions unemployed in the whole country,” said Mr Ellis. , Giving an example of how trade in ! America has been affected by the depression, Mr Ellis said that during a petrol -war in California recently petrol was being sold at five cents a gallon, including a tax of three cents, so that the consumer Was paying about Id ; per gallon for the spirit itself. Some of the service stations in Los Angeles were filling up the petrol tanks of the cars for nothing providing the motorist purchased oil. “There is no mistake about it, the country is in a bad 'way,” concluded Mr EUis.