COMMENTS AND OPINIONS

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1783, 15 July 1926, Page 2

COMMENTS AND OPINIONS

ON DOMINION TOPICS.

CULLED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES

The termer is a traditional freetrader. 'He wants his requirements for land and house to be purchaseable without the added cost of a customs duty, and he does hot wish to court the risk of retaliatory duties imposed by other countries to which he exports his products. But in 'Mew Zealand of late the farmer has become an ardent protectionist in respect of imports competing in our own markets with his goods. Breadistuffs provide a vivid 'example of the present day. But the farmer cannot have it both ways. He cannot claim protection* for himself and deny it to those of the towns whose living is wrapped up in the prosperity, even the continued existence of the manufacturing industries. If any are to 'be Subsidised it should not be the old(er-established ones, such as agriculture, but rather those which are struggling to. get a start in life, or are striving to keep, going in the stress of a competition which, owing to the disturbing world conditions, was absent when they came into being here to fill a want which was perhaps acutely felt at the time by the farmer himself most of all.—Dunedin Star.

The efforts to enlarge the production of wheat in New Zealand have failed, and all the subsidies and, protection will not improve the situation, because in the long run the effect will be to decrease the production, with the consequent use of the tariff wall to keep going a fight for which the unfortunate consumer must pay. The farmer may mention the protection afforded the miller, but the position to-day is that a few farmers a very few, and those well able to hold their wheat, are using the duty, while the consumer counts his pennies and wonders why he does not object more strenuously to this protection of primary products in those seafeons when his voice receives most attentionSouthland Times.

The complexities of modem society create fresh duties for local authorities from day to day, and this all means the increasing army of employees. On the administrative and clerical side they now number over twelve thousand!, while the unskilled employees of local authorities, permanent and casual, totalled, over 17.000 last year. The local bodies are handling a revenue from rates, licenses, and other taxes slightly in excess of five millions sterling per annum, equal to £3 19s 6d per head of the population. Wherever -he dips into the Local Authorities (Handbook there are impressive figures, suggesting that by far the larger share of government is done, not from Wellington, but in hundreds of local centres all over NewZealand, and t'hat although taken in detail the local activities do not appear to be so important as those centralised in the capital, in the aggregate they are just as extensive.—Wairarapa Age.

IS it advisable to build a primary industry under the cover of a protective tariff, -where experience has shown that this form of artificial stimulus in the long run is not effective? If the growing of lemons is a sound proposition it will develop sturdily of itself, and the industry will hold its own; but if the tariff is employed the artificial aid will assist the development of something weakly, something that will always need support. Experience points in the direction of avoiding protection in the case of primary production, and while the section of farmers who are personally interested may complain that they are badly treated they should take a broad view and recognise that the producers generally have to pay for this protection without the country getting real benefit from it. —Southland Times.

The providing of advice to mothers and the inculcation of sound hygienic and dietietic principles are the fundamentals of the Plunket system. Instinct and common sense are linked to science. To see the consummation of his ideal, a great and humanitarian service, based upon 'private subscrip-

tion and State subsidy, has been the life aim of the .Society's founder. Neither the Government nor the individual citizen can afford' to let that ideal be last. (For this reason the Society's appeal for increased membership is justifiable and, sound. In the realm of altruistic service no organisation stands higher than the Plunket Society.—Christchurch Sun. Unquestionably it is evident that for the electrical industry, the manufacturers, and the farmers, in a country like New Zealand, where 95 per cent of the created wealth comes from the soil, rural electrification is a major undertaking. Doubless its limitations and possibilities are not fully understood to-d!ay, but in South Canterbury the vital problem is the provision of adequate supplies from a reliable source at attractive rates. For a satisfactory solution, vision, hope and enterprise will be required, but if the people of South Canterbury fail to enter into the rich heritage Nature has so beneficently bestowed, the district will fail to attain its high destiny as a foremost commercial, industrial, and agricultural centre. —Timaru Herald.

Accprding to Sir Joseph Ward, overseas lands are not going to pay the prices they have been paying for cur products, and the coming stable prices wjll mean lower land values all round. Unintentionally, perhaps, the Liberal ex-Prime .Minister has assisted the Government in connection with the controversy over the soldier settlements that required to be written down. In the ordinary course of events there was bound to be a lot more criticism of the National Government and of the Reform Government this session in respect of the depreciation in values of those settlements. But, if it would be right to depreciate tL? varies of new properties, the Nationalists, at any rate, cannot keep on reiterating that the purchase / of the soldier settlements amounted to an awful blunder in view of the fact that the valu&s of many of them had to be written down. —Gisborne Times.