PRODUCERS’ PROBLEM

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 50, 23 November 1926, Page 15

PRODUCERS’ PROBLEM

Sir, —Mr. G. Anderson entirely misses the point in discussing this matter. The “unparalleled impertinence,” as he terms it, of the “outside interference” consists in the buyers of our butter exercising their right to buy butter from whom they please at the current market price, and any buyer is entitled to do this, just in the same way that the Dairy Board is quite entitled to say what price it will take for its butter. No one has yet denied that right. All that has been said is a warning to the board that if they demand a price which does not meet the buyer then no sales will eventuate. Mr. G. Anderson must surely realise that when supplies are plentiful, it. is the buyer who says what he will give, and it is only when supplies are short that the seller can fix his price. Under present world conditions dairy produce is so plentiful and easily obtained that if English buyers don’t like the price asked or “fixed” by the Dairy Board, they need not buy any New Zealand butter, they can get all they want elsewhere. This is why our butter has slumped. Let him remember that no “outside interference” has taken place, no one has denied the Dairy Board’s right to fix prices at any figure they like, so there is not “impertinence” on any one’s part. The only thing that has happened is a warning as to. the certain result of an economic policy.

No commercial man, bank, or merchant, can "fix prices” arbitrarily, or in conflict with the world’s market conditions, and no one in commercial circles would be such a fool as to try. Mr. G. Anderson must be very prejudiced if he really has "failed to discover” anv difference between the board’s foolish attempt to fix prices regardles of market conditions and the commercial world’s policy of recognising that only supply and demand governs prices.—We are, etc.,

N.Z. WELFARE LEAGUE.