THE FARMER AND THE EXCHANGE RATE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21579, 26 February 1932, Page 10

THE FARMER AND THE EXCHANGE RATE

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, —The funny farmer takes himself very seriously. He looms large iu his own estimation. His interests he considers paramount. We are constantly being told by him and his societies that he is the backbone of the community. He impresses the State that its first and almost sole duty should be his interests. If he is the backbone, as be contends, be forgets that if it were not for the body and its members there would be no need for the backbone. If there were no consuming public no one would take his stuff for nothing. If they are living on his produce he is living on their purchasing power. • Politicians have pampered and petted him, subsidised him, protected him, established costly State departments, with experts and inspectors, given him concessions and free carriage on the State railways—all at the expense of the general taxpayer. He has been subsidised, and the public at large hag been deprived.of millions to bolster up his wheatgrowing activities. The exchange problem he sees only through his own spectacles, and-clamours for a free market and no favours simply because he thinks this will favour him. Well, let us have no favours either way. Free the exchange, abolish all duties on wheat, and let the market take its course, as the farmer insists over the exchange question. And let every other question be treated in like manner in the interests of the whole community. It would have paid the State to buy out all the wheatgrowing land and sell it back to the farmers at £2O an acre, or even less, and tell them in future to grow what they chose. One year's cost to the community would have paid for the lot. —I am, etc., Commonweal. 1 February 24.