The Souhtland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. TUESDAY, MAY 29, 1928. FARMERS AND VOTES

Southland Times, Issue 20498, 29 May 1928, Page 6

The Souhtland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. TUESDAY, MAY 29, 1928. FARMERS AND VOTES

When President Coolidge vetoed the McNary-Haugen Bill to provide aid for farmers he definitely put an end to all question of nominating him to represent the Republican Party in the Presidential contest. Mr Coolidge does not wish to stand, he has made that plain on more than one occasion, but a section of his party has hinted that at the last moment his name would be put before the convention in the hope that Mr Hoover might be defeated. The veto of the Farmers’ Aid Bill, however, will set the greater part of the Middle West against Mr Coolidge, and perhaps against Mr Hoover, who is stated to support the President in his refusal to sanction the measure. The opposition to the Bill is that it involves a measure of control foreign to American ideas of free competitive business, but this attitude is not pleasing to the farmers who require cheap money. Agricultural problems are uppermost in most countries in the world. Sometimes the comment on the New Zealand political situation conveys the impression that this Dominion is alone in its land problems, but in Britain, with so little protection that the country is almost free trade, the farmer is faced by difficulties no more pressing than those confronting the tiller of the soil in the United States where prosperity has grown to affluence behind a high tariff. The explanation is that when prices tend downward the primary producer is the first to suffer, because the cost of production does not ease as quickly. No simple, pleasant solution is available for these problems, and the United States Congress has discovered that fact. Mention of Messrs Dawes and Lowden as the possible beneficiaries of the failure to pass the Agricultural Relief Bill calls up the principal actors in the antiHoover campaign. It is generally believed that though Mr Lowden ostensibly is Mr Hoover’s chief rival in the Middle West, the real competitor for the party nomination is Mr Dawes, the Vice-President under Mr Coolidge, a man of strong personality and executive ability, whose association with the Dawes Plan gives him an international standing. Vice-Presidents, however, are not considered good material for Presidential contests, and this may weigh against Mr Dawes. He is stronger in every way than Mr Lowden, and the belief that at a late hour he will take the senior place as Mr Hoover’s principal opponent is widespread in the United States. Undoubtedly the defeat of the Agricultural Relief Bill will be a serious blow to the Republican prestige in the rural electorates, and the party will leave no stone unturned to recover the ground it has lost by what will be regarded as an act dictated by the moneyed interests. The Democrats will do their best to make use of this ammunition, which explains the serious view taken of Mr Hoover’s association with President Coolidge in the defeat of the measure.