SHARE HAWKING AND CLASS LEGISLATION.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVII, Issue 4460, 21 October 1933, Page 4

SHARE HAWKING AND CLASS LEGISLATION.

(To the Editor). Sir,—Can you or any of your readers explain why it is Messrs. Forbes, Coates, Ransom, McMillan, and Adam Hamilton consider themselves and their fellow farmers are so lacking in intelligence as to require legislative protection preventing their being canvassed for shares? The proposed new Companies Bill permits a business man to be canvassed for shares in his office—is that because our farmer Prime Minister and his farmer colleagues in the Cabinet have some grievance they wish to work off against the city man —or belonging as they do to the farming community, admit that maybe the farmer is a person of lower intelligence and therefore must not be canvassed? It is convenient, of course, to copy the English section relative to share hawking, but then is England governed by farmers or business men? If the brain and intelligence of the New Zealand farmer is considered by our politicians to be equal to that of his city brother possessed of an “office” within the meaning of the proposed new Act—by what process of reasoning is one class of the community to be granted a monopoly of backing new flotations at the expense of the other? Are we to admit that the above gentlemen are sufficiently intelligent to govern this Dominion—but on their retirement from politics and return to their former farming occupation are under the new Companies Act to be classified as persons of lower calibre —to whom no offer of shares must be made unless it be by their sharebroker? If too poor to indulge in the luxury of a sharebroker —that they must (because they are farmers) he protected against themselves lest they back a dud flotation? The biggest industry in this Dominion is farming. Without the farmer this country would have been bankrupt long ago. It is surely a poor tribute to the intelligence of the man on the land to legislate against him upon the ground that unless he has a sharebroker to think for him, he is unfit to decide for himself where and how he shall invest his savings. I suppose the greater proportion of our M.P.’s are farmers —considered fit to govern this Dominion—yet this group of Coalition politicians solemnly advise the country that the class from which they have sprung—the class representing nearly half the people of this Dominion, and producers of 90 per cent, of our exports, must not make any investment except through a licensed sharebroker, and because they make their livelihood in the country instead of in the town they must not be canvassed for shares—that they need protection on account of their ignorance—but that the man in the town possessed of an office is to be considered a person able to think and act for himself; and therefore may be canvassed by anyone; that the standard of a man’s intelligence is to depend, not on his occupation, but on the fact as to whether he does or does not possess an office. Can you beat that?—l am, etc., COMMONSENSE.