BRIDGING THE GAP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 June 1938, Page 8

BRIDGING THE GAP

PRINCIPLE OF COMPENSATED PRICES NEED FOR UNITED FRONT. ADDRESS BY COLONEL CLOSEY. An interesting and informative survey of the compensated price campaign in New Zealand was given by the Dominion organiser, Colonel S. J. E. Closey, at a well-attended meeting of representatives of the farming community in Masterton yesterday afternoon. Colonel Closey was given an attentive hearing and at the conclusion of his address answered many questions. A resolution endorsing the principle of the compensated price was carried unanimously. Colonel Closey stated that the campaign embraced the constructive, workable and just demands of the farmer for social justice, comprising four phases, namely: The disclosure of an injury, the measurement of that injury, the presentation of a claim and the conditions and. form of settlement. In addition it had been extended to examine development. The injury consisted of buying dearly and selling cheaply—the farmer having to sell his goods on a low free trade world price level and buy all his requirements on a high New Zealand price level. The degree of the injury was the extent to which New Zealand price levels had been lifted above the price levels where the farmer sold his goods. As an approach to the task of measurement, Colonel Closey quoted similar undertakings carried out in various other countries such as Canada, America. Northern Ireland, South Africa, India and Australia. The increased production was no way out, he said, when stressing the importance of bridging the gap between prices and costs. The New Zealand farmer was the most efficient exponent of his craft in the world and was the only competent New Zealand business man who measured up to world standards. The fight to reduce tarrifs and wages had gone on for thirty years and there was nothing to report but defeat. They were defeated because the farmers were not strong enough numerically to defeat the growing city blocs, which stood united and made one man’s quarrel the quarrel of the lot. There must be a new line of approach and it was that line that would bridge the gap. Commenting on the fact that the income of the vast majority of New Zealanders was based upon farm production, Colonel Closey stated that it appeared advisable to prove the assumption by testing the behaviour of national projects when the farm income was disturbed. Perhaps a serviceable check to the theory of a wealthy structure could be obtained by observing the effects upon the various groups in the Dominion during the years 1930-33 when the farmers’, returns experienced a sharp collapse. Wages, railways revenue, imports, savings bank deposits, share prices, insurance policies and the “non-neces-saries” bought in the home, all showed a calamitous collapse and gave rise to the query: “Can New Zealand again afford to let farmers' incomes sink in a crisis?” Pointing out that there were many other industries dependent, largely upon farming, which escaped injury because of the fact that their product was too vital tc? the farming process to be restricted, Colonel Closey quoted as an example the dairy factories and the freezing works. These consumed two-fifths of the total output of coal in New Zealand. Had the several groups concerned in this scale foreseen the slump and agreed to subsidise the exporting farmer, it would have taken less than one-ninth of their actual losses to insulate New Zealand completely from the world depression. After dealing at some length with the policy and proposals of the present Government, Colonel Closey returned to the subject of high farm costs and low farm prices, the serious effect of Which had been to throw large areas of second-class land out of use. Several million acres were thus affected. Added to the injury of the land lost to the nation, they had the position that the Crown was the largest holder of this type of country, and those areas had received the terrific impact of high costs as against low returns. It would pay the Crown to underwrite compensated prices. Colonel Closey said that after having explored the benefits which might be expected from the expansion of the farming base of the wealth structure, they could now assume the case established for a national move towards seeing that the gap should be closed. Colonel Closey was accorded a hearty vote of thanks on the motion of Mr W. J. Thomas.