VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

Taranaki Daily News, 22 March 1935, Page 7

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

VIEWS ON CURRENT TOPICS MORTGAGE ADJUSTMENT BILL. CURE-ALL NOSTRUMS HEARD. (To the Editor.) Sir, —The Corporation Bill is law— State Advances under a finer name and costlier and more complex to work. But for all its two keepers the leopard will not change his spots. Here is the new Bill, its mystery being its final form. Some are for applying cure-all nostrums, currency reform—to a man in his last agony. Others would fix a minimum price for farmers’ produce—in a market where the wind bloweth as it listeth; this is' to say, as the State fixes the pay of its servants and court awards that of workers; unemployment schemes the dole of relief men and tariffs the profits of secondary industrialists.

This is the policy of national self-suf-ficiency, making a living by taking in each other’s washing, with its trailers of loan-jobbing and public works, bringing the State into competition with the citizen in the loan and labour markets. Pursuit of this policy in the United States and Canada has beggared a continent and reduced over ten million farmers to the status of dole recipients; In Australia it only enables farmers to exist by means of State subsidy of their produce.

Even with such estates you cannot for ever play economic ducks and drakes; still less with a twopenny holding like ours. Even coalition cannot for ever be propping society up, as an inverted pyramid ..on its apex. Meanwhile the dairy farmr- must see to it that he is not made a chopping block for the benefit of big men, with ultimate loss to the’ taxpayers, with whom the “oockie” should always be associated. Again, I say. write down the assets of the lending departments, reduce - the fanner’s liabilities proportionately. Discharge him from bankruptcy; with due commiseration,' and leave him to carry on till the next slump.—l am, etc., ROBERT J. BAKEWELL. Waitui, March 21, 1935.