"PULL TOGETHER”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21019, 7 May 1930, Page 16

"PULL TOGETHER”

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY PRODUCERS 1 CO-OPERATION ESSENTIAL By J. SUTHERLAND ROSS, C.M.G. (President of Dunedin Manufacturers' Association). Side by side with the increased demand for New Zealand manufactures, one notices increased propaganda for the old halftruth that the fanner competes in the open, unprotected market, and has to buy all his locally manufactured goods increased in price by a tariff which imposes heavy burdens on him in consequence. \ We manufacturers are always ready to concede that the farmer is the backbone, of the country, and while this week we are making ' 1 a display of our secondary industries, it will perhaps not be out of place to refer to a few of the tariff items which support the vertebrae of the man on the land. Admittedly, most of us require some protection to enable us to make headway, but so does the farmer. Great Britain steadfastly sets her face against the taxation of foodstuffs,- but here the primary producer is protected by an ’ import duty on many lines, among which let me enumerate wheat and flour, bran and pollard, maize, oats, barley, peas, onions and potatoes. There is a duty 'on all animal foods coming into this country—preserved meats, bacon and hams. On the , other hand, he has enjoyed • a guaranteed, price on expotted eggs, fruit and pork, whereby if the basis amount were not obtainable in the open market, the balance has been made up by Government guarantee. Practically all his machinery for agricultural and dairy, farming needs comes into the country duty free, and a large amount of this is*of foreign origin. The industrialist, on the / other hand, pays a duty of at least 20 per cent, on any foreignmade machinery. The farmer, during the last year, has had £25,000 of State money given him in the form, of the carriage of lime on' the railways, and £70,000 in low freight rates on fertilisers. The allocation of; public'money last year for agriculture was £456,000; the cost of the Department of Industries and Commerce was just under £IO,OOO. ( Wool, hides, skins and pelts constitute one-third in value 1 of the Dominion’s exports, and it is worthy of. note that the competition for these lines on the part Of the local manufacturer is of direct financial benefit to the producer, as the local men must always out-bid the mail who buys for export.' The eighty odd thousand industrial workers raise no cry against the wheat and other duties, for which they have to pay their share, and a little thought will surely show they are entitled* to an equal measure of consideration from their brethren on the land. The foregoing remarks are meant to show.points of resemblance between the man on the land and the industrialist, not points of difference. We are both wealth producers, neither of whom can fulfil his destiny without the co-operation of the other, wherefore it behoves* us to pull together.