PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18325, 15 February 1923, Page 9

PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS.

/: Sir, Mr. .L. W. '•'. Macarthur's puzzle-' ment over the question of producers and consumers is ! due to the tyro's mistake of dividing the community into two sharply-defined groups. There is no such division. Each one of us is both a consumer and a producer. Farmers are not, the only producers, and they are certainly consumers as much as the rest of us. No man produces anything in the sense of creating it.. He sows, tends, cultivates, reaps, moves, and carries commodities to the consumer. Every man engaged in this work does his part In production just,, as the farmer does his share. The carter, the merchant, the banker, the miller, the storekeeper, the carrier, the baker, all do as important a part in the chain as the farmer, who moves the seed to the ground, moves the soil over it, and moves the crop to the rail. The fact goes further than this. For the men who selected the seed sown, the men ,who taught the farmer his work, who gave him his education, who cured him of his illness, who protected his interests at law when they were threatened, the scientists who provided him with the artificial manures that increased his drop, the inventors and makers of the implements he used, the capitalist who lent him the money he required, all do their share as producers. No man, in short, can exist unless he does his share in production, just as no man can exist without being a consumer. Children, of course, are nob included. ', W. J. Curry. 14, Commerce Street, Auckland, February 13, 1923. J