The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1918. THE FARMERS FROM TIMARU.

Taihape Daily Times, 24 September 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1918. THE FARMERS FROM TIMARU.

(With which is Incorporated The /aihape Post and News).

Some farmers are persistent in offering the best of evidence In proving that the land laws and land tenures of this country are antagonistic to the well-being and life of the people; that no community can prosper, or even exist unless some very radical changes are brought about. No wore of reproach can be hurled at woolgrowers and meat-producers which accuses them of dishonest profiteering; they did not have the fixing of the prices of the commodities they produce; the Imperial Government requisitioned the output of their land and left it to them to refuse or accept the remuneration offered. That they have made an exceedingly good bargain very few will deny, but it would be mere carping t'o animadvert on their good fortune, which is also the good fortune of the whole body politic. Can some wheat-growing farmers | be so satisfactorily regarded? The Tima.ru Branch of the Farmers’ Union has handed a letter to the Minister for Agriculture which is calculated to give that Honourable Gentleman a good deal of thought on the colossal avarice of human nature. There is no evading the of what those Timaru farmers want; their wants are set out. shorn of all sophistry, in plain understandable terms. They want protection from all outside competition; they also want absolute freedom to fix their own prices for their wheat; they want no Government price-fixing, and they show some alarm lest the surplus half-mil-lion bushels of wheat imported by the Government should he allowed to go on the market this season, entering into competition with their product and possibly interfering with their price-fixing proclivities. These gentlemen evidently do not care whether the country sinks or swims; whether people die of starvation or become lank and lean starvelings; they will, not grow enough wheat to feed the people unless they can charge what they like for it, which is far above what the people can pay, and they object to the people’s Government buying wheat from Australian farmers, who will grow it for a reasonable remuneration. It seems that the Timaru men have astonished themselves with their own audacity; they appear to have a nether region idea that they have over-stepped common-sense and common judgment as they have an alternative to their demand for absolute protection from competition while they fix their own prices, in asking the Government to make a straightout offer for their wheat grown next year, and also for that grown the following year; they would tie the people’s Government down to giving them carte blanche to do as they like, and then they ask the people to give them a straight-out offer for the next two years’ wheat The Government’s experience should absolutely deter them from even a consideration of such a proposal; Government promised, begged, coddled, and made the country look ridiculous in endeavouring to coax farmers to put more land under grain, and returns show that there were actually over two thousand acres less under wheat, oats and barley than in the previous year. There was certainly an incerased area under wheat, but there was that area less in oats and barley, and a total area of over two thousand acres less ploughed. In briefly summarising what the Timaru farmers ask for it will be seen that they do not desire to have to deal with the people’s representatives at all; they want a Wheat Controller appointed, and they have I rather extreme fears about labour which they would like the Government to allay. While they frankly state they canont offer proposals for dealing with failure of crops there must be no competition from Australia or elsewhere; and if a Wheat Controller is appointed they will willingly give evidence. This magnanimous offer is deightfully illuminating; it lays bare all that is in the minds of

the men from Timaru. Tuey must \ have an open market, freedom from j competition, they take no responsibility for failure to produce the people’s | ne'eds for bread, and they havn t a proposal to offer. There is a bogejtroubling them in the half-million bushels of wheat the Government has spoiling in store somewhere; they are afraid this wheat would be used as it might affect their price-fixing; do anything with it, keep it in store till the crack- of doom, but do not let it come out for fear the people should be able to buy a loaf of bread at a price their wages will permit. That wheat must not be brought into the market under any- circumstance, it would spoil their little game. They have virtually told - the Government that if Ministers have any fear of the . people, all they have to do is to appoint a Wheat Controller as the scapegoat; which will,, carry, all such . sins into the wilderness and present the sinners as clean and just before the people. It was unjustly said that wool and meat farmers were forced into taking prices the Imperial Government offered for meat and wool, but wheat-farmers say there is no shipping whip over them; they are not forced to take the price any Government likes to offer by a threat about shipping' being diverted to the 'Argentine or anywhere else. Unfortunately for them there is plenty of wheat at a reasonable price over the Tasman Sea; they see this difficulty might be got over by a Wheat Controller who would say that Australian wheat must not come to New Zealand. But what a damnable doctrine to preach; a shortage must be engineered by any means, however "destestable, so that prices may be forced up. What does a shortage with high prices mean? It means that the very fact of an insufficiency of the food whereby people must live is callously engineered so that a few may become indecently rich while the masses J starve. This cornering of the nation’s food hares some very nasty facts; why wonder at rumours of strikes and labour upheavals when ■ men have the audacity to ask the Government to protect while they say to the workers, “You must pay my price for the loaf I grow or you must starve.” ! We have no hesitation in saying that any Government with pretensions to honesty will not do anything of the kind; a Government’s first duty is consideration for the | health and stamina of the people, not a pandering to the greed and voracity of profiteers. President Wilson had not the slightest hesitation in telling American wheat jobbers and cornerers quite recently that he Avould neither take their wheat or allow a higher price to be fixed. He told them | the war might soon end, which would { set free huge wheat stocks in Australia, Argentine and India, and put the ' States to a loss of five hundred mil- ; lion dollars if he gave what they ‘ wanted. They dare not tell President • Wilson they would not grow wheat; ’ 1 President Wilson ,has a keen sense of ’ | his responsibilities. Wbat will the * ! New Zealand Government do with the U farmers from Timaru? ,