FARMERS' REHABILIATION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 67, 21 March 1935, Page 6

FARMERS' REHABILIATION

THE FORGOTTEN MAN. Th* l forgotten man under the Rural Mortgagors Final Adjustment Biill is the farmers’ creditor (says a statement ' by the Associated Chambers of Commerce of New Zealand). He has been forgotten for a long time. Despite the fact that he was making voluntary agreements at the , time ihe farm finance problem was deevloping, the Mortgagors’ Relief Act of 19?. 1. in a stroke deprived him of his right Io foreclose, had he wished to, and had he thought at advisable to do so. Under this AH, he has made sacrifices by way of reduced interest rates, the postponement of arrears of interest, and the wiping off of arrears. Now. under the Mortgagors ’ Adjustment Bill, he may have his principal arbitrarily reduced, and part of his ownership of the property confiscated and handed over to his mortgagor. •' Vested Interests. ’ ’ The picture usually drawn of the money-lender—obese, surrounded by illgotten gains, intent on getting his pound of flesh, is a- fantasy which is nevertheless still credited to a certain, extent. It savours of bathos to insist ihat widows and children are largely the. real money-lenders, but it. is curiously true. Thousands of people of small means, whose payments to insurance companies for policies, to friendly societies, building societies, investment companies and trustee savings banks, have gone to make up millions of pounds which are to-day invested iu mortgagees —it is people such as these who are. going to suffer under the present Bill. 'l’he fact has been stated before, but it is too little appreciated, and references are still being made iu the House to “vested interests.” There are people who could, at this juncture, produce statistics and index tables dealing to exhaustion point with prices for .farm products as compared with costs, to show what the farmer is up against; but that is properly no ammunition for anyone to fire at the farmer’s creditor, who was once a good fellow, but who has now become odious to some because he has the colossal impertinence to want, to preserve his capital against a legalised raid under Slate machinery. Losses Under Stay Orders. There are farmers who agree that there is not and cannot be any justification for penalising one section of the community, namely, the farmer’s creditors, many of whom are as hard-pressed as borrowers. For the creditor of the farmer to be selected out of the whole community, his contracts violated ami part of his property confiscated is a most indefensible and unjust discrimination. It is pleaded that most other countries have taken somewhat similar measures—as if an offence is condoned because all the boys of the neighbourhood gather round the orchard and raid the fruit. Less is heard of the fact that England has upheld the sanctity of contract, and that there is no legislation in any British country on all fours with that now proposed for New Zealand. If the farmer's mortgagee must face up to losses on his investment, well and good, but there is all the difference in the world between his arriving at his loss by voluntary agreement with his mortgagor, and having his losses determined for him by the State on a basis of complicated and cumbersome procedure which is most unlikely to achieve justice to both mortgagor and creditor. 'rhe farmer’s creditor is still the forgotten man because while the Bill lays it down that allowance shall be made for the farmer’s living expenses, nothing is said about the living expenses of the necessitous mortgagee—who may be an old man or woman threatened now with penury and with no hope of rehabilitation. The mortgagee is not to be represented, by anybody appointed to act in his interests on 1 either the Adjustment Commissions or the Court of Review. Again, supposing a property under a £5OOO mortgage could be sold to-day for £4OOO, but under a “stay order” it was carried on instead for the five-year period, and then it had to be sold for £2500; who is to bear the loss which, the mortgagee would then sustain? The Bill, for the benefit of a small number of people, makes a great departure from the established practice that all a man’s assets shall be availQ_h|p to meet hi.s ered-if-or-s.