MR HOLLAND'S TOUR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20104, 21 May 1927, Page 7

MR HOLLAND'S TOUR

SPEECH IN CHRISTCHURCH. REPLY TO MR COATES. DAIRY CONTROL MATTERS. PRIME MINISTER CRITICISED. CPKfi United Pbess Association.! CHRISTCHURCH, May 20. Nearly 700 persona were present at the Choral Hall to-night when Mr H. E. Holland (Header of the Opposition) replied to the Right Hon. J. G. Coates’s speech at Dargavillo. The Mayor of Christchurch (Mr J. K. Archer), vice-president o£ the National Labour Party, was in the chair. The Mayor introduced the present loader cl the Opposition in New Zealand and the future Prime Minister. Mr Holland explained that ho made his reply to the Prime Minister’s speech at Christchurch instead of at Gore because of the better telegraohic facilities. Otago’s Conservative paper had commented on his riot replying at Gore on the night following Mr Coates’s speech, but it must be remembered that Mr Coates had replied to him (Mr Holland) a month after his speech had been made. Mr Coates’s thorough examination into the incidence of taxation, said Mr Holland, had resulted in reducing taxes for -the wealthy classes. The extension of scientific agricultural education had resulted in the Government fixing a site for the agricultural college before bringing down the Rill, with the result that there was a split in the ranks of the Prime Minister’s own party. His investigations into farmers’ land banks, had been followed by the banks raising the rate of interest on overdrafts. A Bank of New Zealand gentleman, replying at Wellington to him (Mr Holland) had said that that would not affect the small farmers much, and anyhow they would only have used the extra money to buy petrol—one of the most callous remarks the speaker had ever heard. Mr Coates was encouraging secondary industries when hundreds of men were willing anti anxious to work, and the best the Government could oiler was 12s per day j to married men and 9s to single men. Mr Coates was going to improve the , selective organisation in immigration.— ' (“Hear, hear.”) If they read Sir James Parr’s speeches they would find him painting a glowing picture of New Zealand to j the immigrant and saying that every person over 21 years of age had £2OOO. If that wore the case, then from the audicnee Labour should bo able to got nearly . as much money as Mr Coates got from unknown scourcos at the last election Referring to .Mr Coates’s election pro ' mises and to the “man who gets things done,’’ Mr Holland said ; ’’Ho has cor- 1 tuinlv got you done.”—(Laughter.) < “Mr Coates is extremely unhappy,” said < Mr Holland, “in his choice of enithets 1 when ho says that I have been repeating ( parrot-like certain information gained I second-hand, and it is only necessary for ? mo to remind him that I prepare my own ( speeches and do not find it necessary to road lengthy typewritten sheets put into my ; hand by someone clso When he expressed the opinion that I appear to be better i posted than himself in the doings of Mr 1 Paterson, J suggest that ho has only him- t self to blame. If the Rrinio Minister had I boon sufficiently industrious to follow my I method of filing records from the s weekly, and monthly papers, ho mignt f have been equally well posted in regard f to Mr Paterson, and not unite so much at c sea with respect to the record of his own r doings in dairy control.” All Mr Coates < proposed to do, added the speaker, was r to change the name. He would ad; Mr ? Coates for a straight-out reply to the a question whether he was pre-dairy con- i t-ol or anti-control.

CO-OPERATIVE MARKETING. Mr Holland said that the Labour Party supported the general principle of cooperative marketing because it saw in it the possibility of transferring the control of the marketing of New Zealand primary products from the speculators in Tooley street to the producers themselves. When the idea of control was first mooted the proposal came from the farmers themselves, and before legislation was enacted the Labour Party, along with others interested, insisted that the suppliers—in other words, the working farmers —should have the right of declaring by ballot whether or not they favoured the proposed legislation. A ballot was taken in June, 1923, when 71 per cent, of those voting declared themselves in favour of the compulsory clause of the Bill which was then before the country. Only 29 per cent, voted against the compulsory clause. • With respect to price fixing in the present case it was not a question whether there should or should not be control, but merely who should do the price fixing. If the producers of New Zealand failed to do the work themselves, then undoubtedly it would be done by Tooley street as it had been done in the past. Control came into active operation on September of last year, and was followed by a crisis on the market affect- I ing New Zealand butter. Those representative members of the Farmers' Union I were right to declare that that crisis was I not due to the operations of control but j to the planless system of non-control which had preceded it and which led to the 1 storing up of New Zealand butter in large quantities for speculation and other purposes. When the seamen’s strike took place prior to the election of 1925, Tooley street elements set out to gamble with New Zealand butter for their own purposes. Prior to the coming of the new season’s supplies in November they had done everything in their power to discredit New Zealand stored butter and deprecated its value on the grounds that it ) had been stored. When eventually the new season’s supplies arrived they then sot out to attempt to drag down the price of Now Zealand butter by using the stored butter. Whereas earlier they had used the fact cf stored butter for the purposes of praising its poor quality they now got to work to boost the good quality of stored butter as against fresh butter. This had been their method right through. They openly declared that it was their custom to bring down the price in order to make it possible for them to purchase huge supplies at lower rates, to bo held for a time when those supplies could be unloaded on cho market at higher rates. Prior to the coming of control and immediately after it a vigorous anti-control tampaign had been instituted. Three instances of the anti-control campaign would oe sufficient. In one case a wholesale Groceries’ organisation had sent out a circular to various bodies, in which it was asked [hat resolutions should be carried on the ines of tho one submitted by the, wholesale irganisation condemning control, priceIxing, and against the board generally. It vas asked that those resolutions should be ent to Mr Coates (Prime Minister), who vas then staying at the Hotel Cecil, and it vas sot forth that this should bo done to ihow how widespread was the opposition 0 control and price-lixing. Furthermore, t was slated at the end of tho circular hat the communication was marked ‘private,” because it was desired that Mr Mates and others should understand that ho resolutions came spontaneously from liffcrcnt boards. The second instance would bo rernomicred in the form of a cablegram which ■amo to New Zealand on March 9 hist, onsisting of nearly a column of a letter oundly denouncing control, etc., and not wen giving the name of tho author of the iropagnnda. It was stated that this cabletram represented the views of the prorniu nt marketing authorities. Tho third instance was that of a cablewain from the editor of the New Zealand ilines to tho Daily Mail in London, .n .hich it was stated that tho manager of he London agency was being employed by he board to wring the last penny out of he British consumers, and it concluded i y asking whether the British public would tarn! for this sort of price-fixing. That nhlegrnrn was undoubtedly part of the rnpugamla campaign and was designed to iscrodit on the one hand the board, and n the other hand to damage the dairy pro nets of New Zealand. It should be rolernbcrcd that the directors of the Daily Tail were abn connected with the direr forte- of one of the largest multiple shops 1 ftreat Britain.

With reference to Mr Paterson, this

gentleman was appointed in Juno of 1926. Hie engagement was a part-time one, and the salary was £IOOO per year. Mr Paterson’s attitude should have been loyally to carryout the decisions of the board, and to give effect •to its policy, but from the day of his appointment to the day of his retirement his attitude was one of hostility to the board itself, to control, to pricefixing, to the manager of the London agency, and to the constitution of the agency. A representative farmer of the Wairarapa district, Mr Brechin, speak ing at Masterton on March 30, declared that Mr Paterson had been responsible for the appointment of three Tooley street representatives on the Price Fixing Committee of the London Agency, and ho further understood that it had been found that those three Tooley street representatives, while supposed to bo acting in the interests of the board and for the protection of both the producers of the Dominion and the consumers of Great Britain were engaged in buying up largo stocks of Argentine butter for the purpose of organising a gamble to the detriment of New Zealand butter. Mr Grounds arrived in London a month before Mr Coates, and when Mr Grounds returned to New Zealand the board unanimously adopted a resolution requesting the Government to permit them to retire Mr Paterson. A letter to this effect was written to the Government on January 19 last, but no reply was received until March 12 —nearly two months later, when the present Minister of Agriculture, the Hon. O.'J. Hawken, wrote that the Government was fully satisfied with the manner in which Mr' Paterson was doing his work, and it refused to allow him to retire as the board requested. This meant that Air Paterson was undoubtedly carrying out the Government’s policy. Shortly after Mr Grounds reached London he met Mr Paterson, and the latter gentleman came to him with three proposals, the main one of which was that the London manager should be dismissed. The second was that price fixing should be abandoned and the constitution of the agency changed. A few days later still Mr Paterson made a further proposal that an unnamed gentleman should bo appointed London manager in place of Mr Wright. Mr Grounds came to the conclusion that the proposal was only one to further discredit the board and damage control, and he emphatically told Mr Paterson that there was no chance whatever of Mr Wright being dismissed. On October 15 Mr Coates arrived m London. On October 19 Mr Grounds discovered that Mr Paterson had arranged for a deputation of six Tooley street gentlemen to meet Mr Coates as a deputation on October 23. Mr Grounds at once wrote tn Mr Coates urging that the Minister should see him (Mr Grounds) before the deputation took place in order that le (Mr Grounds) might know the i nature of the proposals the deputation would place before the Prime Minister. Mr Coates did not reply to Mr Grounds s letter and the deputation took place without the chairman of the board being there or knowing what was doing. Then, on October 25, Mr Coates sent for Mr Grounds and informed him of what had taken place a the deputation and he also told him tnat when the deputation came to him he asked them whether they desired to have Mr Grounds present, and they said they did not. Mr Coates, on October 26, sent a cablegram to the New Zealand board with ref.nonce to Mr Wright, and-declared that Mr Paterson’s cablegram conveyed a correct statement of the position as it was in Lonuon. it should be remembered that at this time Mr Coates had not even met Mr Wright A peculiar tiling about those cablegrams was that the day following the transmission of Mr Coates’s cablegram to the board in New Zealand. Tooley btrcct knowall about it, but Mr Grounds said that neither the chairman of the board nor the London agency knew anything whatever of the cablegram until nine days later. The dairy farmers were faced with the fact that cither they themselves had to take in hand the work of co-operative marketing with : t3 possibilities of the regulation of supplies and the fixing of prices in line with market conditions, or they had to leave their products in the hands of Tooley , Street gamblers who would proceed to manipulate arrangements for their own money-making purposes, as they had done in the past. The Labour Party s proposa , was that immediately the Now Zea.and : Hoard should get into touch _wit.li tin- , co-opcrntivc distributing organisation ot Great Britain for the purpose ot more effectively markrling New Zealand dairy j products. The farmers in New Zealand i had developed co-operative factory production to an extremely high point. I lie co-operative union in Oront 15ritain lust year handled over £10,000,000 worth of

butter and cheese, and an endeavour was made to eliminate the neceosary charges between the producer and the consumer.

5 The second proposal which the Labour ! Party made was that the Dairy Pro- ’ dueers’ Export Control Board, in con- ' junction with the Government of Now Zealand, should approach the British | Government with a view to having an 1 effective food produce council set up through which the primary products of the dominions could be supplied to the consumers of Great Britain. This could be done on the basis of three or five years’ contracts, the council contracting for stated quantities of Dominion products. It was fully recognised that the utmost care would have to be exercised in the organisation of such a council and in the fixing of contracts, but it followed that if such contracts were made between the Now Zealand Board and the British Food Purchase Council on the basis suggested, it could not help working out to the advantage of both Great Britain and the domii : ons. A similar proposal had been adopted by a recent conference of the British Labour Party, when a motion was moved by Mr J. R. Clynes. These suggestions, if given effect to, would prove most effective. Further, it would mean that reciprocal arrangements would be made under which we would take secondary products from Britain, such as machinery, motor vehicles, hardware, etc., which were not manufactured here. At the present time we were sending huge sums of money to America and Canada for goods from these countries, while they took very little indeed of our products, and this meant that the balance of trade as between New Zealand and those two countries was heavily and detrimentally against us. The Labour Party laid it down that if the interests of primary producers of New Zealand were to be conserved, and the interests of the consumers in Great Britain safeguarded, the marketing of our primary produce would have to be based on an organisation that would eliminate the speculator and the manipulator. It was the duty of the people of New Zealand to unhold the board against the elements of 'i'oolcy street, who gambled in the people’s food supplies, and it was equally their duty to uphold the board against the Reform Government if necessary. GROWTH OF LABOUR. Mr Holland referred briefly to Labour’s steadily gaining power all through New Zealand, and spoke of his good reception on his tour. Ho would return to his constituency next week, when ho would deal in a series of speeches with phases of Mr Coates’s statements. Mr G. R. Thompon, local correspondent of the North Canterbury Labour Representation Committee, moved, and Mr Armstrong, M.P., seconded, a vote of thanks to Mr Holland and confidence in Labour’s cause. Mr Holland was accorded hearty cheers as he left the platform.