GUARANTEED PRICES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 24 June 1937, Page 10

GUARANTEED PRICES

“EUPHEMISM FOR STATE CONFISCATION”

article by labour m.p. DISCUSSED The Labour Party realised in the last General Election that it was the country electorates which kept it from attaining power, and the votes of the farmers were won by extending sympathy to them, and by assuring them of a higher living standard, unaffected by market fluctuations, said Mr O. C. Mazengarb, of Wellington, in an address at Bulls for the National Party. The term “guaranteed prices,” was ingeniously designed to convey a comforting assurance and to eliminate the dread of State ownership and control. In a little more than a year the farmers find themselves sadly disillusioned, and the victims of clever political tactics. Although Government intervention has given the farmer hardly any more than he would have received for his butter on a free market, the farmer finds that his costs have gone up by 2d per lb of butterfat, or about £2 a cow. “The cheese producer is in a much worse position. The actual pay-out for cheese is about 7s to 8s a cwt less than the market return. This means that the Government is making a profit of about £7 to £8 a ton on approximately 90,000 tons of cheese, and at the same time has increased the farm and factory costs of the cheese supplier by about 3d per lb. Is it any wonder that farmers now regard the ‘guaranteed price’ as a political take-down, ana merely a euphemism for State confiscation of farm produce at whatever price the Government chooses to fix?

“SHALLOW INSINCERITY”

“The shallow insincerity of it all has recently been revealed by Mr C. Morgan Williams, Labour M.P. for Kaiapoi, in a considered magazine article published under the title ‘What Can be Done for the Small Farmer?’ ” Mr Mazengarb continued. “In this article Labour’s representative argues and urges the case for State farms as a means ‘to wean the farmer from his individualism.’ He opens his article with delightful candour, by saying: ‘Many of my friends say to me, :‘The Government is doing a great deal for the wage-earner, for the unemployed, and for many business people, but it is not doing much for the small farmer except to make his life harder.’ My reply Is ‘What can be done for the small farmer? What can be done for the village blacksmith, the saddler, the chaffcutter, and all those people who are left behind in the march of Time?’ “The farmers of New Zealand may resent the implication that they have fallen behind the times, but they will surely agree with the member for Kaiapoi when he proceeds to admit the real effect of his party’s recent industrial legislation in these words: ‘I have no doubt that the improvements in wages and conditions not only on the farms, but in industry generally have made it impossible for many small farmers to employ labour, and have had the effect in many instances of driving the farmers’ wives and children into the cowshed.’ Probably farmers have no doubt about this either!

“A CLOAK OF LIBERALISM” “Shortly after the election the Prime Minister and other members of his Cabinet, to allay the fears of the antiSocialists, took a cloak of Liberalism and proudly proclaimed that they 'would begin where Seddon left off.’ But Mr Morgan Williams has blown the gaff by stating that ‘From the point of view of political strategy it was a great bl«nder on the part of the Seddon Liberals to settle thousands of workers on the land as individual farmers. . . . Economic and socal forces combined have doomed the small farmer to gradual extinction.’ “Manufacturers and other producers may possibly seek consolation in the hope that, while the Labour Party is planning to tear down boundary fences and eliminate homesteads as a necessary preliminary to large-scale cooperative farming on the Russian model, they will be left alone. But Kaiapoi’s member of Parliament deprives them of even that hope by his prediction that ‘the farmer in New Zealand as elsewhere will remain to the end an opponent of Socialism and the last pillar of private enterprise.’ Cottage builders, and mon engaged in motor transport have already received their running shoes. The idea of licensing chemists, fruiterers, petrol sellers, and the like as a first step to ‘State shops,’ proceeds apace. Mr Savage stated after the election that we had nothing to fear. Is this true * -day? Who is safe from the Socialist? The rue grain of comfort for the farmer is that he will be the last to go. “The Acting-Prime Minister may reprimand his colleague for this premature revelation that the Government is working with the skids on for complete Socialisation in this generation,” Mr Mazengarb concluded, "but lovers of freedom and those who hate the idea of regimentation will thank Mr Williams for his engaging frankness.”