MANUFACTURERS AND FARMERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 602, 2 March 1929, Page 8

MANUFACTURERS AND FARMERS

Need for Mutual Good-Will (Written for THE SUN) THE recent round-table conference between representatives of the Auckland Provincial Farmers’ Union and the Auckland Manufacturers’ Association was a highly desirable “get together” movement between our national wealth producers engaged in primary and secondary industries. There has been a great barrier of misunderstanding between town and country producers in the past, resulting in hostility and prejudice existing where mutual goodwill and co-operation are urgently called for.

r PHIS hostility between our primary and manufacturing producers has developed more in the Auckland Province than elsewhere in New Zealand, and so the need for bringing about a better understanding between them is more imperative here than in other parts of the Dominion- In fact, in most other portions of the Dominion, the farmers’ unions show no antipathy to fostering local industries, and at the annual national conference of the Dominion Union the free trade

remits from the Auckland provincial branch are invariably rejected in favour of a sympathetic attitude toward the town producers, who provide a certain and growing market for the farmers’ foodstuffs and raw materials. IGNORANCE AND PREJUDICE To put it bluntly, there exist between the local manufacturers and farmers mountains of ignorance and prejudice which must be scaled or levelled before a complete understanding of each other’s viewpoint is possible. It was unforunate that at the recent initial conference, instead of seeking out passes through these obstacles which would bring the two types of producers together on common ground, the discussion went off at a tangent, with the delegates head-

ing in opposite directions, instead of approaching each other. Largely ou account of misleading propaganda, the Auckland farmer has been constantly urged to regard the manufacturer as a natural enemy instead of a fellow-producer, who has many problems in common with the land worker. The farmer appears to view the town producer as an exotic growth, spoon-fed by a protective tariff which enables the manufacturer to exploit the farmer by raising prices against him. Our agriculturalist is convinced that the town industrialist, in league with his trade unionists, uses the tariff wall and the Arbitration Court to batten and fatten on the primary producer—who, in the final analysis, imagines that he is somehow forced to bear all the burden of these increased and artificially raised costs of production. BURDEN OF TAXATION

These are illusions which have become firmly fixed in the minds of our local farmers’ union, and form the greatest obstacle to a better understanding. A true and exact conception of the actual facts is necessary to clear the approach to each other. So far from the manufacturer being a spoilt and pampered charge of the State, the true position points to the very reverse. The three main items of direct taxation are income-tax, land tax, and death duties. In 1927 the total amount of income tax paid was £3,422,216. Of this amount, all the farmers contributed was the meagre sum of £7,645; those engaged in manufacturing and industrial production paid £600,000, apart from income tax paid on salaries and wages by those employed in those industries. “What about land tax?” asks the farmer. The amount paid in land tax was £1,230,000. Of this amount, those engaged in farming paid £603,000, approximately one-half There were 23,000 farmers owning land of the unimproved value of under £2,500. Only 14,875 of these paid land tax, their total levy being £38,000 —an average of £2 13s a year each. In other words, Is a week! The manufacturer has not only to pay income tax, but has also to pay graduated land tax on the same scale at the primary producers, and is further burdened with local rates, which are usually levied on the capital value of his premises, and are far heavier in proportion than the rural rating levied on the farmer. When these primary and elemental facts are properly digested, the farmer may be more disposed to a sympathetic view of the “pampered” manufacturers’ problems. P.A.