THE NEW LEADERSHIP

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22823, 2 September 1937, Page 15

THE NEW LEADERSHIP

Sir, —In future we in New Zealand I arc to live in a " paradise," built by Mr. Savage. Never again, he tells us, are we to walk where wo have walked during the last eight years. As he tells us this " definitely," it is evident that there is no doubt about it —at least in the mind of Mr. Savage. On what, then, does our prosperity depend? We are so organised that almost two-thirds of our production is farm production and more than two-thirds of our farm produce is exported. Between 1928 and 1932 the prices of our exports fell by more than 40 per cent, and so our farmers, and the Dominion, lost £20.000,000. Mr. Savage has never explained how he would have prevented that loss, nor has he told us how he is to prevent similar changes, involving similar losses, in the future. We might, of course, if markets failed us, abandon two-thirds of our farming and substitute the manufacture of what wo now import, but we have the farms, the livestock, the factories — all that is required for the production of our exports, and we have practically nothing of what would he required for the manufacture of what we now import. Thus, the change-over would involve us in impossible costs. How, then, is Mr. Savage to make us independent of the world's markets? How would he have warded off what he is pleased to regard as our utterly unnecessary depression? Since 1933 our export prices have risen hv 62 per cent, giving our farmers, and tho Dominion, £24,600.000 additional for our spending. Has Mr. Savage shown us how ho created any of that increase? What he has done is plain before our eyes. Labour Ministers, by their own statements, are giving an additional £14,000,000 a year to their own class, every penny of which is taken from the pockets of others; they are taking nearly £7,000,000 in additional taxation; they are running our railways at constantly increasing losses —losses that must be made gopd by the public; and they are spending £10,000,000 a year on public works—works which, in largo part, will be burdens in place of benefits. Thus, while fortune has been all in favour of the Labour Government, truth is all against it. The world's markets presented our farmers with twenty-four millions, and in less than two years the Labour Government has lost them almost the whole of it. British people do not love boasting, and they cfo not trust the boaster. In place of teaching the world's statesmen it might be well if Mr. Savage himself learned the two simple truths—that self-complacency is not the same thing as wisdom, and squandering the resources of a countrv is not quito the whole duty of the statesman. CorrEß Coin.