“TALKING UTTER ROT”

Taranaki Daily News, 20 April 1935, Page 6

“TALKING UTTER ROT”

REPLY TO HON. J. McLEOD.

FARMERS’ FINANCIAL POSITION.

“I would say he is talking utter rot and that he himself is in no position to judge, with any .degree of accuracy, the financial position of the great majority of those men who constitute the farming community of New Zealand,” said Mr. H. E. Blyde, North Taranaki provincial president of the Farmers Union, referring at Strathmore on Wednesday night to the views of the Hon. James McLeod, M.L.C., who, he said, presented an argument calculated to indicate that farmers generally were not in a position of acute financial stress. Through his connection with the New Plymouth Savings Bank Mr. McLeod had taken upon himself to broadcast certain statements which should be contradicted, said Mr. Blyde. Mr. Blyde believed that the average farmer, far from being reasonably comfortably off as Mr. McLeod would have one believe, vjas actually in a position that was very close to the verge of bankruptcy/ Mr. McLeod forgot that the figures upon which he based his assumption were derived from the dealings of an institution that was essentially conservative in its dealings and, when it lent money, lent it only on first mortgage security. The operations of a savings bank were restricted by law to sound securities and every application for a loan received most careful scrutiny. The premises taken by Mr. McLeod might, he said, be correct as applied to clients of the bank, but, as everybody was well aware, it was not the . man fortunate enough to be able to give a first mortgage that could be taken to represent the fanning community. On the contrary, it was the man with second, third and fourth, and sometimes more mortgages, that needed assistance and consideration.. Mr. Blyde considered that Mr. McLeod was in no position to judge the financial position of the farming community.