THE FARMERS’ TROUBLES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20743, 14 June 1929, Page 7

THE FARMERS’ TROUBLES.

TO THE EDITOR. Sik, —When Mr Sivertsen says that efficiency in production worild reduce wages, he seems to be out of touch with modern development. Henry Ford by efficiency in producing motor cars, increased wages' to . six dollars a day and reduced hours of labour not only in the making of motor cars but in the multiplicity of industries inseparably connected therewith and sold a cheaper car. The various books published by Henry Ford show that, from a business point of view, the purchasing power of wages is a factoi’ in the demand not only for his motor cars but for other commodities. •

Mr Sivertsen is anxious for farmers to understand what produces value. As 1 watched one of my boys milk a cow, tt dawned on me the question is not what produces value but who produces value. , real P rodu cer is producing values which tor any reason he cannot have for his own use, while those who produce nothing do have his products to use, then it becomes a question of sound public policy to create such conditions as will enable those who produce values to have for their own use the values which they produce. If Mr Sivertsen can help in this direction, he will be rendering a service. I would like to remind him that price about which ho talks so glibly is the value of any article stated in terms of money. But the price of some articles is fixed arbitrarily by monopoly. The power of the monopoly-controlled article to compel an exchange in the market—without any regard to the cost of production either in labour or in the use of machinery, and without any regard to utility scarcity, or difficulty of attainment—causes all theories of value to break down before it. This power to force an exchange at arbitrary prices because of monopoly is essentially not a process of exchange but is downright robbery. Labour, whether that of a self-employed farmer or ot a wage worker, is able to sell itself only for the cost in labour of producing more labour. But labour produces more than the cost of its own reproduction. 1 bis nrodiu>.L of labour, in

excess of the labour cost of producing labour, is the surplus value after which both self-employed farmer and wage worker should unite in going. The process of creating and appropriating the surplus value the monopolist calls employing labour, but when the farmer and the wage worker realise it is-exploiting labour there should be joint action to secure the surplus value Resulting from monopoly and thus obtain a free exchange on the market. The ordinary farmer is not a capitalist but a working man. Whatever land he owns he owns in order that he may employ himself. He has no interest with a monopolist except the interest a victim has in its robber. In these modern days, with its division of labour, the farmer is dependent for the larger share of his living on what he can sell in the market of bis raw product in order that he may again buy out of the market the things he must use. He is even • more unable to control the market when he sells or when he buys than is the skilled worker of the city when he sells his labour or buys his bread.

The trusts have taken the farmer as well' as the skilled labourer and set him to work under the pressure of the iron law of wages, and while the self-employed farmers’ wages are paid in a different way he is as helpless as the wage earner. Through the division labour in the farming industry, as elsewhere, the specialisation and organisation of what were once branches of farming industry have more and more left him dependent on monopoly control. The farmer is as dependent on the shipping monopoly to transport his goods as he is on the trust that controls the making of his netting wire and fixes the prices of these services. He is as dependent on a monopoly-con-trcdled market as he is on the farm. The theories of value put forward by Mr Sivertsen depend for their effectiveness upon an average price in a free market, which he calls the world’s parity, there is no such market, .because, as already explained, the price of trust-con-trolled articles can be continually changed arbitrarily, and also through the trust’s control of money the prices of articles of trade not otherwise subject to trust coutro! may be disastrously affected. Can Mr Sivertsen explain on what theory of value oil is sold to drive the farmer’s machinery when the selling price often exceeds the cost of production many times it is time that wage workers and worktolk a . hand and presented a bold front to theorists of value that give a justification for the, wealth of idleness vaLf tb if Povert y of th e creators of value for how can butter, cheese, wheat, etc be grown except by labour? Surcjy f-fi a j n l er i i' v produce 3 these goods is entitled to the full value of them-I am. Overland.