SHEARING RATES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23014, 17 October 1936, Page 19

SHEARING RATES

TO THE EDITOR Sir —I have noticed lately much criticism’of the high price fixed for shearing this year, principally from members of the Farmei's’ Union, and at a meeting of the executive of the Farmers’ Union the chairman (Mr Smith) said it was the result of an agreement with the representatives of the sheep owners and the shearers. This, while not untrue, is only part of the truth, as I shall endeavour to show. I have been criticised by a northern paper and our farmers’ party referred to as “ traitors ” because I stated while in Australia that this great rise was due to the recent legislation of the present Government, This paper asks pointedly what the Goveimment had to do with it. Well, simply this: The Government passed legislation forcing the sheep farmers to pay the 1931 rate as an irreducible minimum. Now. the average price of wool last year was 9d (fractions omitted) and in ordinary circumstances the shearing rate would have been fixed on that price. Nineteen hundred and thirty-one being a good year, the price was 13d (fractions again' omitted). It therefore follows that the sheep-owners’ representatives being bound hand and foot by legislative enactment had no option hut

to agree to this extortionate rate compulsorily fixed by the Government. In fact, it has converted our nse-and-fall scheme of paying for shearing according to the price of wool into a rise-and-no-fall scheme and therein lies the injustice to the farmer, and I consider it an insult to the sheep owners’ representatives to be asked to arbitrate on a price already fixed in this way by Act of Parliament. What I wish to point out is—not what the farmer pays so much as the one-sided principle on which the payment is based.—l am, etc., John M. Rose. Waitahuna. October 16.