DEFENCE OF EXCHANGE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 49, 26 August 1933, Page 12

DEFENCE OF EXCHANGE

(To the Editor.) I , Sir, —In a sub-leader of '"The Post" of August 22, commenting upon a letter of mine appearing iv the same issue, you i make this statement: "But the greatest fallacy is that' Jlr. McLood implies but does Hi . state directly that the exchange helps the Dominion to pay her overseas interest." Every fourth standard school boy should know that an adverse exchange —whether artificial or natural—cannot alter the value of money of an overseas recipient country. What- every fourth standard schoolboy may not know, but what "The Post" must know, is that exporting cannot for long be carried on at a loss to those engaged in it. The object of my letter was to show that New Zealand had a terrific overseas debt, and that tlio interest thereon was being met practically entirely with farm produce exports. As far as I am awsire, no one seriously attempts to argue that the pegged exchange is not an attempt to-subsidise the farm produce .exporting industry, just as tariff protection is a subsidy to manufacturers. —I am, etc., A. D. McLEOD. "Please allow me to ask the Hon. A. D. McLcod. who defends the pegged exchange move, can lie explain to a humble person who is trying to live on relief wages what benefit the low-paid worker receives from the raising of the rate of exchange? (writes '"Unemployed"). Mr. MeLeod says the other alternative would be a further cut in wages. Well, Sir, writing from experience since the raising of exchange, I find that we of the low-paid class would rather have had a 10 per cent, cut, for we now find that when we ask for our every-day requirements' at any store we pay as much as l'Asd on the usual (before exchange) iVid article, so that we are about 33 1-3 short of spending value. Of course, those who receive a living wage or above are not at all at a disadvantage, and others who benefit by the pepsred exchange have no reason to complain. It is only the very poor that are' marie to suffer still more privations. .. . With all respect to the Hon. A. D. MeLeod and his proven capabilities as a farmer and member of Parliament, we would yet like him .to try out for a year living ou £1 2s Gd

(as-now ptitil to a married relief worker I. . . . The relief worker has no mortgage, as iie has nothing to mortgage, but the funnel-clings tenaciously to his mortgages, and expects all his poorer brothers to help him, for he fears to let up ami become a relief worker himself. All those who cry out, 'The relief worker is better off than I am' should clown tools and join the ranks of the meek aud submissive subdued unemployed."