The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE SATURDAY, JULY 27, 1918. PRICES AND PRODUCTION.

Taihape Daily Times, 27 July 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

SATURDAY, JULY 27, 1918. PRICES AND PRODUCTION.

("With which is Incorporated The Taihape Poet and Walnmn-uo News).

New Zealand's man-power is being strained to a rather dangerous limit by the military authorities, and it lias now become a question whether what is left of the man-power of this country would not be doing much more valuable and effective work in winning the war by being put to increasing production of food than by being shipped to France, involving a loss of time per man of some nine months from time of being drawn in the ballot. All is not well with a young country like this when sufficient wheat is not grown to feed a population that is not a fiftieth part of what it should comfortably carry. The situation is serious at the present time, but what it may be as population increases if present methods of .go-as-you- please farming are permitted to continue and land tenures of today are not altered, would puzzle a "Philadelphia lawyer" to imagine. If this growing menace to the food supply is to "be removed, the general public, it seems, must set about discovering that which is responsible for it. Very nearly doubling the price of bread has caused those men with limited incomes to feel some alarm; they have given much thought to the subject, but their brains have simply whirled round in a circle. Students of the subject have found that it is the same old circumgyration of higher cost of living than higher wages, round and round it goes, year after year until economic laws bring about a crisis and a crash, and then the old processes start their whirling upwards and outwards over again. -Present day civilisation boasts of its learning and its scientific attainments, but what poor, miserable things men are if they do not know enough of economic science to for ever put an end to this eternal more wages and 1 high-; er prices over and over, mounting up till an impossible position is reached and industrial collapse is the result. With the present high cost of his necessities the farmer says he cannot grow wheat at a profit under three I half-crowns a bushel. Wheat at this j price puts the four-pound loaf up to a minimum of a shilling; then is heard the cry of the working-man, the father of coming generations, who says he cannot buy bread to feed his family en three pounds a Aveek, and the trade union to which he belongs commence* proceedings which terminate in higher wages. This again increases the cost of what the farmer requires including labour, and the three halfcrowns a bushel for his wheat is no longer remunerative and he either 1 gets an increased price or he relinquishes wheat-growing for something that requires labour and is more profitable. With all his polish and civilisation man is no better than other members of the animal kingdom tn that one lives upon the other, a continuous and terrible struggle for the survival of the fittest; the fittest Jn this case being those who are privileged by the processes of laws which were eonceived in greed and nurtured in cunning; "let who will go under and starve. I must live and become a millionaire" is the religion of mankind to-day, and all the boasted learning and scientific pretensions with which we are being swamped has not effected the slightest improvement. Does it not stand to the everlastTSg discredit of this young land that it cannot, or will not, grow enough bread for a paltry million "of people? To say that such a simple economic question is impossible of solution is obvious falsity. If wheat cannot be grown at a price that will permit it to continue the staple food then the world must starve because there is no other food suitable that can be grown cheaper. It cannot be denied that the shortage of labour is a considerable factor in making a dear loaf; not so much that there has been, up to this time, a very iserious shortage, but that

labour has availed itself of the laws

of supply and demaUd, and owing to its scarcity ft has undergone remarkable appreciation. Neither can it be denied that the war demand for produce has put up the cost of labours upkeep to an unprecedented level; conditions became so extreme, justly or unjustly, that the labourer could not buy the food and clothing he required with pre-war wages, and he was justified in withholding his labour until it would produce enough for his share to be sufficient -to maintain him in health and provideTiim with some degree of comfort. It is idle to deny that there is a reachable equilibrium when wages balances cost of living, and it is equally fallacious to contend that it is not greed and lust for power that does not permit of that equiponderance being arrived at. Economics provide the means and point the way to perfect adjustment, but until the ignorance of economics is more nearly eliminated, the few will become legislators and will legislate In their own interests. Governments spend huge sums of accumulated indirect taxation in fostering production and in finning markets for wheat, butter, cheese, meat, wool, in fact for everything this country produces. The masses of the people are cozened into accepting increased burdens of indirect taxation so that they may be made to pay double as much for the food they require to keep body and soul together. This subject is being drawn attention to because it is going to be the question of the future, and it is a question upon which a solution satisfactory to the masses will be forced. Temporarily, the military authorities are making the labour difficulty extremely and dangerously acute by the calling up of every man of military" age. It is not sound argument to urge that every man here should go into the fighting line, much as they are being compelled to do in England, the difficulty, time and cost of getting our men to France is no negligible obstacle, but whether prices of our produce be hig» or low it is urgently needed, and it will be found that it were better this country went on producing and increasing its storage capacity, rather than that it should become so depleted of its man-power: that . production is hampered and' Lessened at the time above all others it should be encouraged and increased.