PUBLIC OPINION

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20890, 23 August 1939, Page 9

PUBLIC OPINION

As expressed by correspondents, whose leLters are welcome, but fer whose views we have no responsibility. Correspondents are requested to write in ink. It ts essential that anonymous writers enclose their proper names as a guarantee of good faith. Unless this rule is complied with, their letters will not appear.

i GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE (To the Editor) Sir,—Your correspondent signing himself “Consumer,” in this evening's Times, under the above heading, shows about as much reason in his remarks as is revealed by the formulation of i his fTrst paragraph. Anyone who has j been in the habit of making oranges ! a portion of the daily diet knows that l since the Government assumed control | of the orange imports they have been j consistently cheaper and more plenti- ' fui than they have been for a number j of years. { If your correspondent desires to find I fault with the Government, he should ! choose a more logical topic with which to waste your valuable space.—l am, etc., ANOTHER CONSUMER. 'Hamilton, August 21. BICYCLE THEFTS (To the Editor) Sir, —-Through the medium of your paper may 1 trespass for a short space on the subject of bicycle thefts? My son had his bicycle stolen from the back of premises in the main street on Friday last. This lad depends on his cycle for his living. To deprive one of his living in this way is, to put it mildly, a dastardly and cowardly practice. t am led to believe that the average of such thefts is two to three a day. The police, always courteous, have j given every assistance, but one cannot expect too much from them, as the j majority have only patrol duty in the j main streets. To my personal knowledge there have been no fewer than five cycles stolen in the last.week.— I am, etc., PARENT. Hamilton, August 21. JUSTICE FOR FARMERS (To the Editor) r* Sir, —During the course of the political babbling brook —the Address-in-Reply debate —through Parliament, Mr E. "l. Gillen (Labour) said that dairy land in Taranaki had been bought for £l5O an acre. Mr \V. J. Poison interjected, “Town supply.” (Hansard, No. 3, Page 324). As it happened, it was not a case of a farmer supplying milk for town supply, but Mr Poison's inference is worth noting nevertheless, ! for it is a fact that where a farmer j has igood dairying land handy to a I large town and supplies for town distribution, through a factory or otheri wise, there the land will be of higher I social value. I Dairy companies, in comparing payJ outs, often make mention of the town supply when admitting that at a place i such as East Tamaki, a higher payout | than the average has been made. Mr ' Poison’s interesting interjection re- ! minds us that, even with the higher payout, such suppliers are commonly on the average no better off than are their fellows further back, since they have to pay the vested interest in the social values of land more for such land —all the traffic will bear, the full market value, plus a speculative elej ment. It is plain, therefore, that high i land values are, under our present uneconomic system, of no value to the ! user of farm land. And even in the j few cases where the holder or family j have held the land right through, they | are getting a social benefit denied to j farmers in general, and in most cases will some day sell out at the socially enhanced value, and the final holders will not benefit. Mr A. E. Jull (p. 414, same Hansard) said that no man living could determine the unimproved value of the country today, but he had already been confounded out of Mr Poison’s mouth, at least by inference. Mr Poison is an authority on farming; Mr Jull admitted that he is not even a farmer, which perhaps accounts for his curious ideas on the subject of land value. Mr Jull said that in hundreds of thousands of cases there was no unimproved value in farm lands, and then he went on to say that land had been sold opposite Palmerston North square recently at £7OO a foot. That being the relative position, I would, as a ; non-party man, invite Mr Jull to support the Natural Justice movement, I and thus take his findings to their I logical conclusions. Without farming, | there would be no Palmerston North I worth mentioning, but the purely : artificial local bodies’ boundaries exj isting prevent the farmers from getting ! any benefit from the colossal social values they help to create in the towns. The high town values are of no gain to the user of land, as such, in the towns either, since there also it is the speculative vested interest that skims off the cream. Amalgamate towns with their counties, having the enlarged I local bodies empowered to collect the full annual social value of land over the enlarged areas, town and country, j using that enormous fund to abolish i rates and reduce laxes, and then the farmers, as well as the users of town, sites, would be relieved of a great burden on production and trade, and the user of land who had bought at high values would be compensated by the reduction of rate and tax burdens. Unfortunately, both parties seem determined not to see ihi* real “gang- : ster." —I am, etc., T. E McMILLAN. | Matamata, Ausmst 21.

THE CALL TO DUTY (To the Editor) Sir,—l find some of the statements of ••1914-1918” too difficult to swallow because they are too easy to swallow. One of these is, “We found that banking and armaments are so closely related that it was for these departments that we fought.” Surely banking is no more closely related to armaments than it is to commence, and therefore if we fought for banking and armaments we also work for banking and commerce. This, of course, is only part of the truth. Primarily we work for our living®, and some of us work because we like it. Similarly when we fight, the fact that banking and armaments are so closely related is really more of a concomitant circumstance than a reason for our fighting. I do not believe that the Allies took instructions from Zaharoff, but if they did—more fools the Allies. “1914-1918” denies that public opinion dictated the Versailles Treaty, but Norman Angel in “The Great Illusion—Now’ states that “many witnesses have testified that some of its most dubious features are explained not by the fact -that the governments and actual treaty-makers believed them to be feasible but because public opinion demanded them.” Of course, the opinion now is that the treaty was shameful, but this opinion was noi held at the time, except by the vanquished. I think his anti-Semitism is illogical. Certainly the Jews are disproportionately active in the motion-picture industry, but in the same way the Italians dominate in wine-making and the Armenians in rug-dealing. Possibly the press may be largely controlled by Jews, and certainly some of the richest capitalists are Jews, but the ranks of the Jews contain Jesus and Judas, Einsteins and idiots; Jews run to extremes. Where does he get his information about the radio being controlled by Jews? Mr Savage and Uncle Scrim will not be pleased. And if true, is there anything wicked in Jews controlling the press, the cinema and the radio? These means of communication and propaganda and of earning a living while competing for our sparetime attention certainly do not usually aim to correct existing error because correction is usually displeasing to those who are corrected and they aim to please. If “1914-1918” had control himself he would either maintain the present policy or probably go bankrupt. The purpose for which we are asked to enlist in the Territorials or in the National Military Reserve has been clearly if not convincingly stated by the Prime Minister, and even though some of us do think that if the matter is serious enough for all this present fuss it is certainly serious enough for everyone to share compulsorily the burden, we nevertheless have only ourselves to blame for the present methods, as public opinion gave the power to the Government which decided on these methods. Should we find that after having volunteered for home-defence only we are to be used as an expeditionary force, or for other purposes, we ourselves will still be entirely to blame, and for the same reason. The whole trouble is that public opinion is almost inert; instead of trusting political promises we should emulate the much-maligned Jew and trust intelligence.—<l am, etc,. 193 9. Hamilton, August 21.