Correspondence

Manawatu Times, Volume 68, Issue 263, 5 November 1943, Page 4

Correspondence

The Farmer (To the Editor.) Sir, —I have just read Mr. Chas. T. j Allingham’s letter to this morning’s j “Times.” I gather that he sold out his i place and went on a job, that his capi- i tal was lumped into current income and s that it was taxed out of him. The inci- 1 den'ce of taxation as it works on our farm, works like this. If you sell a big line of stock (which may have been ; bred oil the farm or bought in with < capital) you must get your capital iu- ; vested again before March 31. Otherwise you are taxed ou the capital as if < it were current income. My tip to farmers in the face of the present situation is this, sell nothing you can hold, keep your farms off the market. Don’t overstock. The whole effect of the present taxation system is to freeze all individual effort. The Government has taken the farmer’s savings. Mr. Allingham is very right. The farmer’s savings are used to even up production between good and bad years. He doesn’t squander much. Ho is too busy lighting the wilderness, and depreciation. The wilderness is a nice term to cover a lot of technical things such as secondary growth or scrub, gorse, erosion and so on. Depreciation is the thing Mr. Nash never heard of, which, omitted from all his calculations, made them a laughing stock to experienced farmers. This farming is a skin game. T’d like to see Mr. Nash tackling a day's fencing. We farmers have no money to squander. Lend your money to the Government, brothers, and let them do your squandering for you. It will save you a lot of trouble and taxation. And above all, sit on your farms. Don’t sell out. The depression was nothing to what this inflation is going to do. It is true we only paid them 10s a week during the depression and it was too much. It was often as much as the farmer’s wife had left to clothe hexfamily on. We were all poor together then. Now we are all going to be hungry together. If you starve the land it will stave you. . You’ve got to fight the wilderness. And when townsfolk get so fat and well fed that they forget that, the wilderness begins to creep in on us. It is coming now, fast. Only a ramp of determined farmers can save Ncw t Zealand from the sackcloth and ashes in which she will repent her Government’s folly. They entered the labour market and drew the men off the farms into public works. Will public works feed the people? Now they are trying to push a few girls out into the country to repair the damage. It can never be repaired. They tried to foster our secondary industries. Will they feed the people? Our standing army of non-producers? After the slump, dairy farming was crushed beueath au iniquitous fixed price and inflated wages. Instead of calculating about 50 per cent, of profits into increased production, Mr. Nash forgot even to allow a big percentage for depreciation. I can’t see how we are going to clean up the mess ho has made of things. Let me hammer in one more nail. We can’t afford this outrageous, expensive social security legislation in a nation of old men and women who are drawing out more than they ever paid in. It doesn’t balance. But, Mr. Editor, this wont do my breakfast dishes, and if I continue my house will be in a worse mess than my beloved country. But we have got to clean up New- Zealand. Only the farmers can do it. Solid and true, they stand between the frivolity of town life and the encroaching wilderness. I am sure that they will rise to defend our country as they have always done, against that foe within our gates, the Squander Bug where he fattens in Government departments. If we have to starve them into cooperation with the farming community, we can do it. Here’s to a great spring-cleaning, Mr. Editor.—l am, etc.. ELEANOR. Feilding, Nov. 4, 1943.