The Waikato Times THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 1935. ASSISTING THE HOME PRODUCER

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19661, 22 August 1935, Page 6

The Waikato Times THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 1935. ASSISTING THE HOME PRODUCER

The return of the Prime Minister and Finance Minister from their trip to Britain has revived interest in the question of subsidies, quotas, and tariffs as they affect our primary producers. Plea sine has been widely expressed that the agreement on the meat question was so satisfactory to our pastoralists, who, in the case mutton and lamb, are practically under no restrictions on the British maikct, and it is confidently hoped that when the final phase is reache affecting beef and dairy produce the position will be equally favourable. The air has been cleared of some ominous clouds, and probably the remaining scuds will be dispersed into thin air. There is another aspect which is being strongly stressed in the Homeland, but largely overlooked here —and that is the position o the British consumer. It is freely admitted here and in other Lmpiie Dominions that the Home Government has a duty to its own producers and must safeguard their interests. But that duty has a limit which cannot be disregarded, for the consumer also has rights, and these must not he infringed. Thus the extent of protection accorded the sugar-beet industry is already being challenged. Mr I. M. Horobin recently affirmed that there were all the elements present of an unsavoury scandal in an effort to bolster up an uneconomic industry to an extent enabling the factories to make enormous profits and put considerable sums in reserve. Such a state of affairs, of course, means the exploitation of the consumer of sugar. The same thing is noticeable in the British milk marketing scheme. As w r as pointed out at the annual meeting of the New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Association yesterday, this scheme (which the producers at a recent poll decided shall continue) is having a detrimental effect on the sales of milk powder and evaporated milk, but it also prevents the supply of cheap milk to the needy. Suggestions that fresh milk should be procurable by these at specially cheap rates raised a fervid protest from the milk retailers who recognised that it would be a menace to their profits, despite the fact that there is a surplus that could be supplied to the poor and unemployed at a lower figure than that fixed for the general trade) and it is being urged that some of the money now used to subsidise the sugar industry should be diverted to providing cheaper milk for the unemployed without in any way trenching upon tho retailers’ perquisites. Subsidies and guaranteed prices produced the milk surplus, and further subsidies are now being sought to permit the use of this surplus for the benefit of those families which need it.

The London Times senses a danger of a similar state of affairs arising from the imposition of tariffs or subsidies on the importation of meat, for it writes: “ The tariff system foreshadowed must bo a # low tariff system, and the interim subsidy system must be a small subsidy system, if the country as a whole is not to weary of the task to A’hich it has set its hand. The country would never endure a great increase in food prices, caused by inefficiency and profiteering, or by bock, on the part either of producers or of retailers; nor the mulcting of,the general taxpayer for the benefit of those who do not,deserve assistance. . . . The consumption of food in this country has not reached saturation point. Our people are living better and cheaper. But they are still not living as well as they might. There is still a great problem to be solved in the shape of getting to every person in the land all the food that he or she requires.”

This consummation will certainly not be expedited if tariffs and subsidies imposed upon imports of foodstuffs are exploited by the few to the detriment of the many, for the last state of the consumer in that case would inevitably be worse than his first.