AUSTRALIAN FARMING

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 190, 28 August 1937, Page 16

AUSTRALIAN FARMING

Our Own Correspondent.V

American Critic of Economics of Marketing "IMPENDING COLLAPSE"

• (From

' SYDNEY, Aug. 18. - A' vigorous young American publicist. Mr. C. Hartley Grattan, who is » »• presentative' of the Carnegie Cprooration of New York, has poured refreshing, if provocative, fuel on a burning question of Australian economics and agriculture. His main eriticism, that ' ' Australian ' farmers have not solved isatisfactorily any of their fundamental problems ' ' angered farmers and . their Parliamentary repregentatives, but he undoubtedly expressed the sentiments of the consumers, who have suffered under the national policy of bolstering up farm product prices. Mr. Grattan made his barbed remarks at the annual conf erenee oi the Agricultural Bureaux, .to an audience mainly.?of farmers. ."Australian farmers, he said, f'are living ih a jerry-built house, which will certainly tumble down and kill thousands if it is not carefiilly reconstructed before" the hurricane strikes. " * ' ' T All these elaborate marketing boards which you have constructed bear the same ' relation to • a decent solution of * the farmers'- problems as -a Kouse made of second-hand petrol tins and old bags bears to a deceiit dwelling. Australian farmers' must get out of the petrol tin and old bag stage of develbpinent, or they are". doomed. ' ' - Mr. Grattan said the fundamental task in the world .was . to raiae standards of living. The farmer as a producer for the commercial market made his • contribution to this end by enthusiastically supporting the schemeg that raised the prices .of indispensible foodstuffs, thus making it impossible for those whose living standards were low; to achieve a decent standard of consumption of foodstuffs— where improv* ment should begin. ^ / • Instead of trying to bring prices down to world-parity levels, and' thus get -Australian consumers on all-fours with British consumers, Mr. Grattan. added, the Australian farmer hoped and prayed.that world prices would rise ahd - 'force British, consumers to pay a price equal to that obtained in Australia. This was in face of the fact that, even at low prices, only a fraction of the British population could buy adequate supplies of foodstuffs. "The -Australian farmei; apparently believes in high' production cbsts, high prices, and an undernourished consuming public— -in short^ low standaTds of living. He complains of the difficulty of . making a -living, yet with his G'ov-f ernments devises schemes of getting more people on the land. Unless the farmer takee a long view and brings his activities into line with fundamental trends in world affairs, he, like all who oppose the inevitable, from Hing Canute to Adolf Hitler, is doomed*."-. - - " Farmers Have to Live, Spokesmen for the farmers, ranginj from the acting-Prime Minister, Du Earle Page, and the State Minister of Agriculture, . Mr. Hugh Main, botl members of the Country Party, to ofli cials of rural self-protection organisa tions, assai^ed Mrj Grattan 's yiewd Dr. Page in a general rebuke, saidl "Until farmers are organised sufficient ly they have* to live. Australia. has me| the problem by providing a home-con* sumption price." The critic, replying to his critics said: "'Apparently the truth hurt? eV'en old., old, truth. I am not a _hast> oning globe-trotter forming five-minut« impressions. I havie "isfcudied decpl^ many books on Australian life and ao tivity. . I have boen feix months in th« country, and havo travelled all ovcj Queensland and New South Wales, go* ing right outback and visiting practi cally every town. - '.'.Australiaus are too casual. Thej show a perverse pride in being casuai They are not facing things vitally, the same as people do in other countrieS; They do not xeally discuss real things, It is necessary in Australia to elevatc public thought above the level thal accepts food, clothing and housing ai being all-sufficient for a man and his family. That is the view reflected in their philosophy of the. basic wage. _ 1 1 Australia, like my own country, Jfl at- the crbssroads, but discussicn here is not like that in America. There is . a marked absence in Australia of controversy with the gloves offf to argue which road shall be taken. The col-* lision of ideas is not sharp enough t.o strike the true fire which will set the nation- aflame with hope and confidenc-e^ But, under the placid surfacc of Arns-i tralian life, there is a smouldering fire, which sooner or later must find opon expres'sion and powerful support."