CORRESPONDENCE NATIONAL MORTGAGE FINANCE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 40, 15 January 1935, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE

NATIONAL MORTGAGE FINANCE.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —In' reply to various letters that have appeared in your paper criticising my remarks on the “National Mortgage Finance” proposals, “Investor” can sae no virtue from beginning to end of the suggested measure. According to him “the whole thing is farcical in the extreme” and that mortgagees throughout the country will be sacrificed without mercy or justice, to appease the hungry maw of the farmers. Mr Wm. Thomson takes just tho opposite view and says that unless farmers receive what is due to them, “they and their wives and their children will bo driven either half mad or forced to lieconie revolutionists.” I would point out to these gentlemen that it is obviously impossible to frame a measure that will please everyone, also that it is better to attempt to do something to extricate the country out of its troubles rather than sit with folded hands and cry “Kismet.” Apparently many do not realise that the whole world including New Zealand is in a state of rapid economic alteration. Old established customs and ideas are being dumped, everywhere new ideas and fresh methods are being introduced and tried out. Some of the new ideas may not have all the virtues attributed to them, but nevertheless they are mostly genuine efforts to alleviate the position. Who could have predicted ten years or even five years ago, that Great Britain would throw free trade overboard and embrace protection, or that she would put a quota on the importation of foodstuffs, or that exchange between New Zealand and England would rise to 25 per cent., or that it would be thought necessary to introduce the Mortgagors’ Protection Act, and other almost socialistic measures in New Zealand; or that wool would drop from Is 4d to 4d per lb, butter from Is 3d to 7Jd, and frozen lamb from Is to 6d, with all the resulting reactions on the values of land, and the consequent worth of mortgages, and the effect on the lives of the communitv in general ? We can no more prevent or retard the march of events than we can stop the tide from rising. Proposed legislation such as the “National Mortgage Finance” measure, while distasteful to a few who think they may be adversely affected, is in my humble opinion in the best interests of the country as a whole, and is a genuine effort "to improve a serious position, and avert financial disaster.—l am, etc.,

M. A. ELIOTT,