INTEREST CHARGES

Wairarapa Daily Times, 17 December 1932, Page 5

INTEREST CHARGES

FURTHER REDUCTION URGED. At yesterday’s meeting of the Wairarapa Provincial Executive of the Farmers’ Union, the following resolution was moved by the president, Mr 11. Morrison: — “That this executive firmly believes that the Government of New Zealand should follow the lead of the British Government juid the Bank of England, in making a further general reduction in interest charges as a first essential towards our economic reconstruction, and that rent on both Crown and private lands should be lowered to a standard commensurate with a reasonable pre-war productive value. Any additional assistance provided for the primary producer in the nature of a bounty should be utilised for the purpose of meeting such reduced interest, and renti n necessitous cases only, thereby benefiting both the mortgagee and mortgagor.”There was spine difference of opinion on the subject of a bounty to farmers, and after a good deal of discussion it was agreed, on the suggestion of Mr Alex. Ross, to delete the second sentence of the resolution (dealing with a bounty). Thus amended, the resolution was carried unanimously. Air Morrison said that before the slump, New Zealanders were the greatest eporters, per capita, in the world. No oilier community was so dependent luvl they might stand, and shrd slir on world prices. Farmers in this eoun : try had to take these prices at whatever level they might stand, and so were bearing the main part of the ['resent crushing burden. Air Luke, president of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, had said, Afr Aforrison went on to observe, that the cities of New Zealand never had depended on the farmers and never would. Any individual in Europe, if asked what Denmark and the cities of Denmark depended on, would say, “the farmer.” New Zealand was in exactly the same position. This crisis had arisen out of war debts and war inflation. As Air Owen A r oung, author of the A’ouirg Reparations Flan, had shown, the crash in the United States was due to the farmers of that country being reduced to conditions' in which (though the country otherwise was experiencing an amazing boom) they were unable to pay their way. When the farmers crashed, the whole lot crashed. What nonsense it was to say that, in a country like this, farming was not the most important industry, or that, if the farming industry crashed, the whole lot would not crash with it. The crisis had now reached the farmers of New Zealand.