THE GOVERNMENT AND THE FARMERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22659, 26 August 1935, Page 8

THE GOVERNMENT AND THE FARMERS

To the electors of West Taieri was paid the compliment last week that two political addresses were delivered at Outram. In the first of these Mr Ansell sketched the circumstances which had compelled the Government to adopt emergency measures and, naturally enough, as he was speaking in a rural district, dwelt on the steps that had been taken to assist the farmers, whose losses lay directly at the root of the Dominion’s misfortunes. Two nights later Mr Jones essayed to show that tfie farmers have nothing for which to be grateful to the Government and that, in fact, the Government had bungled the whole business of dealing with the depression. The Labour Party would have it apparently that the Government should have carried on as though there was no such thing as a depression. It conveniently forgets that the effect of the fall in export prices was that the national income dropped in three years from 150 millions to about 100 millions and was still dropping when the Government instituted its emergency plans. To have ignored the plain fact of the grave effect which the collapse of the world’s markets had on the Dominion would simply have been to court national bankruptcy. It took a rare amount of courage to adopt the plans which the Government formulated. It was certain that they would be unpopular, but the Government did not 'flinch from the performance of what it regarded as a national duty, and there are accumulating evidences at the present time of the soundness of its policy. Necessarily the welfare of the farmers, who were faced with ruin through the occurrence of the economic storm, was a matter of deep concern to it. Mr Jones and other members of the Labour Party belittle the assistance which the Government has been instrumental in extending to the rural community. It will not be easy, however, for them to persuade the farmers who have benefited through the raising of the exchange rate, through the compulsory reduction in interest rates, through the operation of the subsidies on fertilisers, through the mortgage legislation, through the subsidy on local rating, and in other ways that the Government has not afforded them very tangible help. It should not be easy, either, for Mr Jones and other membei’s of the Labour Party to convince the farmers that the shadow of a weird policy of guaranteed prices is preferable'to the substance of the benefits which have been conferred on them by the measures that have been adopted by the Government.