THE SMALL FARM PLAN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21650, 21 May 1932, Page 14

THE SMALL FARM PLAN

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Your correspondent, Mr G. Stringer, in discussing the Small Farm Plan, would have us put up with inconveniences and privation until prosperity returns. Does lie not realise that the conditions necessary for an abundant prosperity are here now, and we only await a Government policy which would apply this abundance to the needs of the people? Can Mr Stringer not see that the Government’s present policy, which is to be continued for four years, will produce an increasing poverty among all classes, and no amount of praying for the Almighty!* blessing will alter this fact. God’s blessing of abundant harvests have, through gross stupidity on the part of the many and greed on the part of the few. been converted into the “ curse ” of over-pro-duction. Mr Stringer would appear to be one of those who take at its face value all that appears in the newspapers, ignoring the fact that behind the Government stands “ sound finance ” dictating certain lines of action, one of which is the “ Small Farm Plan,” for which Mr Stringer gives Mr Coates great credit. The reason that “ public works type ” houses are to be erected is chiefly that the plan is not temporary, but permanent. The tenant will be in debt from the start and thus surrender his freedom from the outset. In praising the Government for its scheme your correspondent shows himself to he a slave to the commodity theory of money. Money is not, never has been, and never will be, a commodity, but is a purely artificial creation which, hou'ever, under the present scheme of things, enables those 'who control it to control all things. Once these simple facts are realised it will be appreciated that our Chamber of Commerce, in passing, a motion (obviously submitted to it) to urge an Empire currency “ absolutely free from Government control,” was, in effect, but advocating tightening slightly the rope at present hanging loosely about its own neck and the necks of other people.—l am, etc., , Ivan E. Sutherland. Dunedin, May 20.