ENGLISH GOLD AND AMERICAN RUBBISH.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 November 1926, Page 15

ENGLISH GOLD AND AMERICAN RUBBISH.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —I was shifting a wire fence recently, and noticed the staples—made in U.S.A.—were rusted, although only in over a year, so 1 asked a man working with me the reason, and he said: ’‘The cute Yanks know that the wire touching, these rusty staples will soon rust and ' e useless, which means more and quicker orders.” As we are finding out now, w’ith a 1/- payout, what the great EngVsh market means to us, it certainly behoves us farmers to see that every penny we spend on purchases, out of our English cheques. ("My good English cheque,” I heard a man last year address it, as he held his bonus cheque up) goes to buy stuff made by the people who are keeping the very hair on our heads. The balance of trade with America is so much against New Zealand that we are not much better than the Irish Free Staters about which the Bulletin remarks: "The Irish Free State maintains a "Minister Plenipotentiary” at Washington (the name of the gossoon is Smiddy). The grotesque and tawdry magnificence with which the embarrassed I.F.S. does things is notorious as well as ridiculous, and the commercial rew’ard that ensues in this case is ridiculous also. Ireland, with its tremendous potentate in the U.S. to push business, sold Jonathan, by latest accounts, a little over £200,000 worth of goods in a year, and Jonathan, without any expensive potentate in Dublin, sold Patrick about 3i million pounds’-worth in return. Patrick paid the difference, in part, at least, by borrowing. As the good times we have had are all kept going by borrowing, Jonathan must be getting a lot of English gold via New Zealand that we have borrowed.—l am, qjc,, XYZ Rahotu, November'll.