FARMERS’ CORNER

Northland Age, Volume 25, Issue 7, 11 June 1925, Page 7

FARMERS’ CORNER

PRIMARY VERS: 3 SECONDARY INDUSTRIES. + (By the Farmer*’ Union, Bay of Islands, Organizer). Because men who have not the same “standard ot living” as J New Zealanders can produce sugar more cheaply than it can be produced in New Zealand, the price of sugar is to be higher than it need be in this country. It has become an accepted doctrine that the customs duties shall be used to level up prices when the local-ly-produced article cannot compete with imported goods manufactured with the aid of “black,” “yellow,” or even “sweated white” labour. y* One item of export assists very materially in making possible these grants to the sugar and most other secondary industries. If the country were not holding its own in the world’s butter market, great difficulty would be experienced in paying the extra wages which the workers in secondary industries receive over and before the economic wages which the ordinary law of supply and demand would allow of them receiving. How does butter tare in the world’s market ? Does it have to compete with butter produced elsewhere under more favourable conditions than those pertaining to the New Zealand Industry ? Yes ! It has to meet the com- . petition of butter produced pract- * ically on the spot, under highly * organised and cheaply financed Danish co-operativg systems. It has to compete with butter produced by the communally associated Siberian mounjik and by the Argentinian peon, with their low standards of living, it is left to face foreign competition, without any tariff assistance, in the British market, and can only enter most markets, if it can survive hostile import duties. Thus, it comes about that the greater the amount ot employment that is found for workers in New Zealand’s protected industr- * ies, the greater the tax that is levied on the unprotected dairy farmer. The tax referred to is * not merely the duty on protected articles. It cannot be too frequently reiterated that the primary products ot New Zealand carry * the whole burden of the remaining industries, just as onesucces- . sful branch of a business enterp- , rise may carry other unsuccessful branches. Nor is this all. There is a reaction on the money market due to legislative interference * with the natural course of trade. Normal trade conditions would | result in the exchange of what we can best produce for what we most require—the latter including * capital for the developement of the country. Legislative interfe- * tence results in the practical ref- * usal to take from those who buy our produce the goods which they produce more cheaply than we can manufacture them. Not only does the dairyman of New . Zealand have to face foreign competition unaided, not only * does he have to find the money to assist to raise the price of all locally-produced goods which he requires, but the capital which he has to use in his own venture is made dearer to him owing to an adverse rate of exchange. Were the dairy farmer doing as * well as the other concerns which he is maintaining, his complaint would still be legitimate, even if it lacked some of the weight it should carry to-day. The plain # fact is, however, that the dairying " industry is to-day to a great extent living on itself, insofar as the fnen who carry on the practical end are concerned. A large portion of the capital of the dairy m - farms of New Zealand is represt ented by mortgages, and, as the i nterest on these mortgages hasincreasedsome forty of fifty per cent since pre-war days, there is a * corresponding drop in theowner’s Interest. (This including all question of artificial values.) The occupiers have been endeavouring to meet this by increased * production, and as more seeds, manures, implements, etc., are required, the toll to the community is being correspondingly increased. It is high time that a most careful investigation should be made of the whole position, and that the Stale shut down on all expenditure calculated to make worse the position of the primary producer, upon the proceeds of whose industry the whole of New Zealand keeps house.