OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 223, 9 February 1928, Page 4

OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS

COSTS OF FARMING. During the course of a receni meeting- of the Matamata branch ol I the New Zealand Farmers' Unior some of the members referred to th( great increase in the cost of farm implements that has taken place withir the last two decades. Prices were quoted offhand to show how the bur den upon the farmer had become progressively heavier. Official figures have since been supplied by the parent body, showing the rise in prices « since 1914. For example, ploughs which were obtainable for £23 15s ir 1914 now cost £4l, or nearly double harrows have risen from £7 7s 6d tc £l2 15s, again nearly double. Frorr tlie list it is evident that the price oJ farm implements and tools of all descriptions has advanced by anything from 50 to 100 per cent., and ever the higher figure is not the limit ir all cases. . When stating a remedy for this swollen costs sheet, it would be a mistake to declare unreservedly that the makers of the implements or the merchants were reaping an extra profit equivalent to the increase ir selling price. The truth is that the industrialist and the merchant are mulcted in the general higher costs of production due to various causes, although these two sections are assisted by protective tariffs. The major factors contributing to higher costs are undoubtedly the Arbitration Act, with its minimum wages, restricted hours and harassing conditions, and the tariff protec- ' tion which helps the local industrialist but is a burden upon the farmer, who sells his produce overseas and, far from being helped by a tariff, ■finds his produce, except in the United Kingdom, blocked by a tariff wall. Political poltroons go stumping up ’ and down the country at the country's expense, bemoaning the difficulj ties besetting the man on the land, ; and confessing their impotence to stem the rural rot that has set in. ■ If they were sincere in their profesI sions of solicitude and strong in j their capacities to govern they would ! fight tooth and nail for an all-round reduction in tariffs to a purely re-venue-producing level, for protection does not protect the main interests of this Dominion—the farming interests. Cheap money will avail nothing if it is to be swallowed up in the general high costs due mainly to an unnatural system of fixing wages, hours and conditions, and to provide 20 and 30 per cent and more, ad valorem, to pay Customs duties. The Consolidated Fund would still be solid enough if about one-tenth of the statistics were compiled and a host of clerks and inspectors put to more profitable, work. Let the. politicians go to the bedrock causes of dissatisfaction among the farmers politically, and there will soon be an end to the threatened emergence of new political parties. If, however,

the present Government will noC produce the goods, then assuredly there will be new parties, however disruptive they may be, or into whatever hands their existence may eventually play.—Matamata Record.