A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2192, 21 October 1920, Page 4

A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE.

(Contributed to u Contemporary.)The 'enclosed cutting {Tom the Maori land Daily Binnacle, under date October 12th, 1935, may interest our readers: —

“A deputation of leading dairymen yesterday afternoon wailed on the Premier, the Right Hon. J. W. (name illegible) in regard to the price of milk, butter and dairy by-products, and their request was that butler should be raised to Pis per lb., and milk to Is per quart. They pointed out as their principal reason for demanding the increase that first-class dairying land was now £OOO per acre. They gave an instance of one dairy farmer who, having to quit his last years output ou the then current 10s Od basis, had drawn as wages for himself less than 10s a day, though his family assisted him early and late and received no wage or wageequivalent whatever. There was, they submitted, only one remedy while dairying laud remained as dear as at present. A farmer could not pay £OOO to £7OO per acre for dairy meadows unless he received at least 12s per Hi. for his butter. Moreover speculation was rife, and land was going to he dearer still. The working farmer had to pay these speculative prices. He was therefore compelled to recoup him.self by the increased price of bis products.

The Premier replied: ‘‘lt’ I raise butter to 12s, will it increase speculation or retard it? W’hcn butter was 2s, your land was £IOO per acre. Who gels all these increases —the working farmer or Ibe speculator i”

Tlio deputation (in chorus) : “The speculator gets them." The Premier; “Kxaetly. Ho capitalises the increase, ami adds it to the price ol.’ -broad acres, oven before the increase is granted. This interview to-day is adding to the price of land Avhile we talk together. You gentlemen speak of a working fanner who does not make 10s a day. I know a speculating farmer who did not even clean his own milking-machines, and yetmade £5,000 in live years by selling two places. The men who bought in are so hard put to it that one had to gel a Government advance before he could buy a keg of staples. The other could double his output it he limed and drained a low-lying pasture; but finance is so tight with him that lie cannot even afford a new deck for his milk van. You have put your case, gentlemen, and I want now to ask you where two other people come in—the real producer and the consumer? 1 '

The deputation: ‘Tf you raise butter to 12s it will ease the position to producers who have paid top prices for land. They will then have a clear margin of Is per lb. 1 The Premier: “Yes, and what will they do with their margin? —Capitalise if. -Add £SO per acre to the price they gave for the land, and sell it to an incomer, who will starve till I raise butter to 13s. Homo will sell even against inclination, for (hey will he smothered in land agen/s, who will almost snatch the place out ol’ their hands to put it on the market. When they are off the old place the-habit of life-long occupation will compel them to get a new one, and their own purchasemoney and that of! hundreds like them will compete in the open market to send the price of land still higher and to increase the number of land a,gents to a greater extent than ever. Your extra shilling, gentlemen, merely means more inflation of values and more laud ageuts. Xow I submit we have enough of both already. 1 ’

A voico from (he deputation: 'What about the world's parity ? The Premier: That is a tiling every producer must and shall have. What lie should never have is the unearned increment to speculate with, thus laying a burden on the consumer and on the soil, I am out to protect two people —the bona lidc producing farmer and the consumer, and to obviate the ('rushing burden laid on both by the speculative enhancement of values. The chairman of the deputation: How will vou do it ?

At this point. I find the eiilting curtailed by a pair of scissors as indifferent to popular enlightenment as those which snipped Magna Charta. Personally 1 am not very optimistic l that 1935 will have found a due to the economic labyrinth in which wanders bewildered poor old 1920. Hence what is there to do but to offer you this truncated reductio ad absurdum and to repeat after that royal blackguard Louis XV., “after us the deluge.”