SUPPLY AND DEMAND

Shannon News, 11 April 1922, Page 2

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —America had such an extraordinary crop of maize last season that there was no market for it, and as a result, we are told, thousands of tons were burnt as fuel. So while the Yankee poultry farmer was feeding out with the cheapest possible foodstuffs in producing the heavy shipment of eggs soon due here from > California, the New Zealand poultryman on the other hand was producing eggs, which will have to compete with these importations under an em- ' bargo placing the cheaper Australian foodstuffs beyond his reach—in order that the local wheat farmer may obtain the highest prices for his wheat. This poultry will produce prosperity for the wheat grower, but cannot fail to have the opposite effect upon the poultrymen of the Dominion. If there be an embargo on cheap outside foodstuffs, placing them beyond our reach in order to foster local wheat production at high prices, then also let the cheap outside eggs be excluded or “embargoed” so as to foster the local egg industry. That would be equitable. The present policy can only have one effect. It fattens the wheat grower and starves the eggfarmer; it builds with one of its paws find destroys with the other. It is designed like a heavy roller which either rolls the egg-raiicher out as thin as tissue paper or flattens him out of existence altogether. It is a one-leg-and-one-stump policy. It has a sound eye and a bung eye, the latter looking for poor, lost consistency. It is a policy that is neither fish, flesh or fowl, or even good red herring.—l am, etc.,

H. LEGER