“BURN WAR DEBTS.”

Waikato Times, Volume 110, Issue 18440, 22 September 1931, Page 10

“BURN WAR DEBTS.”

ONLY HOPE FOR FARMERS. FRESH START NEEDED. WHAT CAUSED THE BOOM? " What the whole world should do Is to constitute a holiday, for all the people and simultaneously In every centre have a bonfire and burn the war debts, each country acknowledge that it is bankrupt get its clearance and start afresh. That is tho only hope for the farmers,” So declared a well-known Canterbury stock and station agent who is in close touch with the position of the farmers. He said to-day that the practice of raising loans to pay the interest and principal of previous debts was only getting the country further into the financial mire. He gave instances where -more than twice the amount of the equity previously held by farmers In their lands had been swallowed up by the fall in primary produce, and stated that the creditor nations of the world must wipe off a considerable proportion of their principal in the same way as farm mortgagees had to write down their capital. Government and the Boom. The action of the then Government in allowing prospective soldier settlers to buy the land themselves, and afterwards to obtain Government sanction for their purchases, was given by the speaker as one of the main reasons for the land boom in the years 19J.9 and 1920. Farmers who land bought at that time were now in the most desperate straits owing to having to find interest on value that was not now there. He stated that if the Reform Government had bargained for the land itself and then parcelled It out to tho soldier settlers there would not have been a boom with such disastrous consequences when prices for produce fell. Land at that time went up from 25 to 100 per cent., and In a good many cases farmers who had bought previously at ordinary levels sold out and purchased other properties at a high price. Those farmers sometimes left up to three mortgages on their former holding, and when prices fell they found themselves with two properties on their hands, and unable to finance both. In the boom times farmers were receiving from 30s to £2 a head for fat lambs, from 2s 6d to 3s per lb. for wool, 2s 8d for butterfat and 7s a bushel for wheat. Last season the price of fat lambs was about 12s a head and for wool Gd per lb. or under was all that could be secured, mainly because the war debts had crippled the purchasing power of overseas countries other than America. “ Mope Food, Loss Money.” “ There Is such a thing as overproduction,” stated the Informant. “The whole world seems to have more food and less money. This lack of money in other countries has forced down the prices of primary produce. Something will have to be done for the farmers, though I have no sympathy with a mortgagee who sold his land In the boom period and left mortgages on it, because he should have known that the land was not worth the price for which he sold it. The soundest men in the farming community today are those who stuck to their land during the boom and did not buy or sell. Previously, a man was considered to have a safe future if he had bought in at the 1913-14 level, but values are now below that standard. Then, much of the sheep country has depreciated through tho ravages of rabbits, which have made an unholy mess of it. It is only recently that the land has been coming back to its former condition.

“ It is a poor man In this or any oilier country who looks round for someone to blame for his disaster. No man should buy land who is not capable of leaning on himself as far as knowledge and cash arc concerned. If lie has to lean entirely on the agent who sells him the land, it is fair neither to the agent nor to himself. The best man with whom an agent can deal is Ihe one who knows his business and is as hard as a nail. There have been 100 many 1 .softies.' ”