GUARANTEED PRICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23224, 23 June 1937, Page 6

GUARANTEED PRICE

"A POLITICAL TAKE-DOWN" FARMERS OF NEW ZEALAND HOW THEIR VOTES WERE WON MR MAZENGARB'S CRITICISM (Special to Daily Times) WELLINGTON, June 21. A vigorous criticism of the Labour Party's legislation as it affects the farmers of New Zealand, the small farmers in particular, was made at Bulls to-night by Mr O. C. Mazengarb (Wellington) in an address on behalf of the National Party.

The biggest of all surprises at the last general election, Mr Mazengarb said, sprang from the fact that so many farmers voted for Labour. Hitherto the country districts had been the Dominion's bulwark against Socialism. The Labour Party realised that it was the country electorates which kept it from attaining power, and so the lines were cast to secure the farmers' vote by extending sympathy to him and by assuring him of a higher living standard which would be unaffected by market fluctuations. The term " guaranteed prices" was ingeniously designed to convey a comforting assurance and to eliminate the dread of State ownership and control. Thus the votes of the farmers were won. But in little more than a year they found themselves sadly disillusioned and the victims of clever political tactics. It did look for a time as if the guaranteed price for butfter was in excess of the world price. The present indications, however, were that the farmer had received scarcely more than the net amount obtained by the Government on sale. But while Government intervention had given him hardly any more than he would have received for his butter on a free market, the farmer found that his costs had gone up by 2d per lb butter-fat, or about £2 per cow. " The cheese producer is in a much worse position," Mr Mazengarb continued. "The actual pay-out for cheese is about 7s to 8s per cwt. less than the market return. This means that the Government, is making a profit of about £7 to £8 a ton on approximately 90,000 tons of cheese, and at the same time has increased the farm and factory costs of the cheese supplier by about 3d per lb. "Is it any wonder that. farmers now regard the ' guaranteed price' as a political take-down and merely a euphemism for State confiscation of farm produce at whatever price the Government chooses to fix? "The shallow insincerity of it all has recently been revealed by Mr C. Morgan Williams, Labour M.P. for Kaiapoi, in a considered magazine article published under the title ' What can be done for the small farmer? " In this article Labour's representative argues and urges the case for State farms as a means 'to wean the farmer from his individualism.' He opens his article with a delightful candour by saying:— Many of my friends say to me: " The Government is doing a great deal for the wage-earner, for the unemployed, and for many business people, but it is not doing much for the small farmer except to make his life harder." My reply is, "What can be done for the small farmer? What can be done for the village blacksmith, the saddler, the chaffcutter, and all those people who are left behind in the march of Time? "

" The farmers of New Zealand may resent the implication that they have fallen behind the times, but they will surely agree with the member for Kaiapoi when he proceeds to admit the real effect of his party's recent industrial legislation in these words: I have no doubt that the improvements in wages and condiditions not only on the farms, but in industry generally, have made it impossible for many small farmers to employ labour, and have had the effect in many instances of driving the fanners' wives and children into the cowshed.

" Probably farmers have no doubt about this either! Shortly after the election the Prime Minister and other members of his Cabinet, in order to allay the fears of the antiSocialists, took unto themselves a cloak of Liberalism and proudly proclaimed that they 'would begin where Seddon left off.' But Mr Morgan Williams has blown the gaff by stating:

From the point of view of political strategy it was a great blunder on the part of the Seddon Liberals to settle thousands of workers on the land as individual farmers. . . . Economic and social forces combined have doomed the small farmer to gradual extinction.

"Manufacturers and other producers may possibly seek consolation in the hope that, while the Labour Party is planning to tear down boundary fences and eliminate homesteads as a necessary preliminary to large-scale co-operative farming on the Russian model—they will be left alone. But Kaiapoi's M.P. deprives them oi even that hope by his prediction that 'the farmer in New Zealand, as elsewhere, will remain to the end an opponent of Socialism and the last pillar of private enterprise.' " Cottage builders, and men engaged in motor transport have already received their running shoes. The idea of licensing chemists, fruiterers, petrol sellers, etc., as a first step to ' State shops' proceeds apace. Mr Savage stated after the election that we had nothing to fear. 1l this true to-day? Who is safe from the Socialist? The one grain of comfort for the farmer is that he will be the last to go. "The Acting Prime Minister may reprimand his colleague for this premature revelation that the Government is working with the skids on for complete Socialisation in this generation, but lovers of freedom and those who hate the idea of regimentation will thank Mr Williams for his engaging frankness."