THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1923. "AN UGLY TEMPER.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19046, 17 December 1923, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1923. "AN UGLY TEMPER.”

It was reported by our correspondent at Ashburton in our issue of Saturday last that a discussion at a meeting of the Farmers’ Union upon the subject of the prices for the new season’s wheat showed that the farmers are “ in an ugly temper ” and that they are “ strongly disposed to organise a widespread strike iu regard to produce and other commodities.” The farmers are deeply aggrieved because the minimum price that is to be paid for wheat is only Is a bushel above the price at which wheat from Australia, where there is a large surplus production, could, under favourable conditions, be landed in New Zealand. “ The whole trouble,” the chairman of the Wheat Board asserts, “is that the farmers’ or wheat-growers’ interests are sacrificed to the exigencies of the political situation.” This was, however, a somewhat unfortunate statement, for an embargo is still maintained upon the importation of wheat. The embargo exists purely in the interests of the wheat-growers. It affords the most absolute protection to them, but it does not encourage them to grow wheat, the area that is under cultivation being substantially less this year than it was last year, and it does not ensure that enough wheat will be grown in New Zealand, or anything like it, to meet the requirements of the country. It is not the wheat-growers’ interests that have been sacrificed, but the interests of everyone who is uot a wheat-grower. The loaf is, and will be. dear in New Zealand because of the maintenance of the embargo on importation and because of the payment to the wheat-growers of a price for their wheat that is largely in excess of the price at which, in the absence of the embargo, wheat could be obtained from Australia. One or two of the farmers at the meeting in Ashburton last week spoke of the desirability of “an open market.” They do not mean an open market in the true sense of that expression. The “ open market ” which they would welcome would be a market for the sale of their produce at the best prices it would command under the protection of the embargo. With wheat in short supply they would doubtless obtain prices that would be entirely gratifying to them while the stocks lasted. The alternative to that, in their opinion, is that they should refrain from growing wheat and thus “organise a widespread strike.” If it has become impossible to produce wheat iu New Zealand so that it may be profitably sold at a price that is equal to the world’s parity, it is economically unsound to continue the growth of the cereal and it is time to consider serf ously whether the attempt to bolster up the industry should not be abandoned The wheat farmers may be sure of this, that there is a grave danger of engendering an “ugly temper” in considerable masses of the population if any effort is made to cause the price of an important article of everyday food to be permanently kept at a level that is not warranted by the ordinary law of supply and demand.

THE BRITISH WAR DEBT. “The debts of great nations must be recognised if the foundations of commercial progress are to stand.” At one time this statement by Mr Stanley Baldwin, in his speech at the opening of the Imperial Conference, might have been regarded as a mere platitude. In the peculiar circumstances of our own period, with particular references to the indebtedness incurred by the nations that were engaged in the Great War, it may almost be suggested that the statement conveyed a, rebuke while it also expressed the determination of the British Government to discharge honourably the obligations into which it had entered. In pursuance of this determination it has now made a great payment of principal and interest to the United States in liquidation of its liability represented not only by the direct war indebtedness of Great Britain to America, but also by the war indebtedness of Allied nations that was guaranteed by Great Britain. The interest charge alone in which the debt to America involved the British Government amounted to over 200,000,000 dollars annually, but the funding arrangement that was entered into between the two Governments reduced the amount required for interest and repayment combined to 161,000,000 dollars per annum. The funding of the debt was, Mr Baldwin said at the Imperial Conference, “the only possible course consistent with the supreme standard of British credit,” and an “essential preliminary to the restoration of the normal economic life of the world.” The due recognition by Great Britain of the need for paying her debts is not the only essential that is preliminary to the restoration of the normal economic life of the world. It remains for other nations to show their appreciation of what is required from them as their contribution to the achievement of this aim. But, whether they pay their debts or not, Great Britain is doing what her own people scattered through-

out the world expect her to do. She has shouldered an. enormous burden, amounting, Mr Baldwin informed the Imperial Conference, to sevenpence in the pound on income tax and equalling three-quarters of the total receipts from that tax before the war, and it is no exaggeration to say that the repayment of the debt to the United States is going to call for all the energies of the British people. It is only to be hoped that the example of the British Government will not be .entirely lost on other countries.