THE BUTTER QUOTA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 108, 10 May 1933, Page 10

THE BUTTER QUOTA

To the present course, which is cramming the British market with. butter at disastrous prices, it is hard to foresee any end but the collapse of the marginal producers. In other words, if favourable but faint chances of im proving markets and prices are disregarded, the only question may be whether production is to be regulated or producers are to be ruined. A great many factors, properly estimated, turn in favour of this view. For example, Great Britain has firmly embraced the policy of protecting domestic agriculture. Second, agriculture has lagged behind other industries in tho movement towards a planned basis, and the Dominions cannot take tho risk of falling still further behind because tra dition is obstinate, and new conceptions of advantage hard to realise. But the case is not yet argued out. The reasonable attitude to take is that it should be argued out; that, when the alternatives to restriction are at best uncertain or forbidding, and at worst calamitous, nobody should hesitate to investigate the possibilities of restriction, good and bad alike, or be disheartened at the outset by the certainty that even the most hopeful will raise hard problems.—The Press.