The Press Friday, October 21, 1927. The Tariff and the Farmers.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19137, 21 October 1927, Page 10

The Press Friday, October 21, 1927. The Tariff and the Farmers.

| Most people will think that the Auckland Provincial Executive of the Farmers' Union was needlessly emphatic, and indeed extravagantly inaccurate, in its resolution of protest against the tariff. It condemned " the Govern- " ment's ruthless sacrifice of the export " and farming industries in that by the "recent tariff amendments the costs of " production have been materially iu- " creased." As a matter of fact the new tariff is not upon the whole an intensification of the protection granted to the secondary industries, and in any case it is obviously absurd to speak of the Government as having "ruthlessly ••sacrificed" rural interests, for such a phrase implies that the Government was consciously injuring the men on the land, and nothing is more certain than that that is the last thing the Government Avould do. Extravagant though the language of the Auckland Farmers' Union may be, it is nevertheless just as well that Parliament and the manufacturing industries should understand that the farmers are growing restive under the burdens imposed upon them. Substantial tariff protection for manufactures raises the prices of commodities, and a consequence is that the scale of wages rises. Most of the protected industries can pass on the higher costs of production, one to another, but the rural community cannot pass on the extra costs, since the prices of primary produce are governed by foreign markets beyond the control of the Dominion. The farmer sees the city worker asking for and obtaining higher wages, and the city manufacturer asking for and obtaining protection in order to meet these extra labour costs. He himself cannot appeal to Parliament to take steps to increase the price of his meat and wool' and butter, although the cost of producing them has constantly increased through the operation of the tariff and the Arbitration Act. It is scarcely to be wondered at that he feels he is being unjustly treated, or that his representatives are sometimes moved to speak as strongly as the Auckland Farmers' Union has spoken. Nobody can deny that the encouragement and protection of our primary producers is enormously more important and desirable than the protection of almost any secondary industry whatever. It is therefore grotesquely foolish that except for the duty on wheat—which is after .all a very if very important part of the total primary production—the primary producer is not protected at all. He qannot, of course, be helped by a tariff! • But he could be helped by a bonus on production. The tariff duties on manufactures, it must be remembered, amount in effect to the subsidising of the secondary industries; and the farmer has aa good a claim for subsidies as any manufacturer. This discrimination in favour of the secondary industries is a large factor in the repression of primary production, and the primary producer cannot suffer without everyone being hurt.