COMPENSATING PRICE

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20262, 3 August 1937, Page 2

COMPENSATING PRICE

FARMERS’ CAMPAIGN. BRIDGING GAP IN COSTS. DISCUSSION IN SOUTH. Members of the North Canterbury executive of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, in a discussion on the progress of the union’s campaign for compensating prices, stated that the campaign was the first which had ever received the unanimous support of the Dominion conference of the union, and that it had so far advanced that the present problem was not that of getting farmers to support the plan, but of getting the Government to adopt it, states the Christchurch Press. It was made clear in the discussion that the plan was to Include all classes of farm products, and speciflo reference was made to wheat prices. The Dominion organiser of the campaign, Colonel S. J. E. Closey, addressed delegates on the plan, setting out that, briefly, it was put forward and supported by farmers all over New Zealand, as the one workable method of bridging the gap between costs and prices received for fa?m products. “Selling Cheap, Duylng Dear.” “The grievance that the farmer has had for years,’’ Coloney Closey said, “has been the rising costs in New Zealand. He has been selling chepp and buying dear —selling on an open market of low prices, and buying in a protected market of rising costs. “In the past your task w r as attempting to reason with the people selling in the Dominion—and the farmer came into conflict with the trade union and the manufacturers. It moves on a different axis now. Our objective must now be directed at the Government, and its policy of high wages and rising costs. This means that we are no longer at loggerheads with parallel groups in the community. “If New Zeaiand has got to have a permanently high cost level, then to the degree that costs cannot, or will not, be reduced, the farmer.must be compensated,’’ he continued. Planning Economic Future. “The Dominion Is said now to be planning. Us economic future, and the farmers must'have a part in that planning. With the powers the Government has taken, and with its declaration of seeing to the welfare of the farmer, it is our task to go to the Government. “Mr Nash has said that the return to the farmer must be measured by the same tape as measures the return to those performing other services. We could .not have slimmed up our own policy in better, words than those.” The Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. M.' J. Savage) spoken in similar strain to Mr Nash, Colonel Closey continued, and, therefore, it was obvious that in taking its compensating price policy to the Government for adoption, the farming community had neither to. establish a new philosophy nor to come into collision with the Government. “In presenting our claims to the Government we are going directly to the source of the “Trouble. We have had a promise made to us, and we are now exerting our claims to the point where we can get redress. “The effect of the compensating price claim was that the Government would be given a sense of ‘accountability,’ ’’ he continued. By that he meant that when requests for higher wages or higher costs were made to the Government in the future, the Government would be able to point out to those making the requests the huge expense it would be to the Government to compensate the farmers for them. The compensating price plan would establish a controlling machinery in New Zealand’s cost level. No policy begun by the Farmers’ Union had ever had such success as had met the compensating price plan, Colonel Closey said. Every province but Westland —which had not yet been canvassed—supported it; the Dominion conference had endorsed the policy unanimously—the only occasion j on which a national policy had been passed without a single dissentient voice. The policy had the further advantage of not setting up groups of manufacturers and trade unions actively hpstile to the farmers. Ways of Bridging Gap. The two ways in which the gap could be closed, he continued, were the lowering of costs or the raising of farmers’ Incomes. What steps should be taken were the Government’s problem—not that of the farmers. Colonel Closey went into details of the possible ways of reducing costs—by removing emergency taxation in a time of no emergency, possibly by the removal of the unemployment tax, by stopping the building of railways and houses, toy spending the national income when the farmer was short-paid. The policy was not against new railways or the housing scheme —but should the national income be spent on capital works when the farmer was receiving threeeighths less than he should? “We can close the gap between prices ami costs by either reducing costs or lifting incomes. The compensating price plan is workable, and without injury to any section of the community,” lie added. “We are not claiming a reduction |of wages. People have the right to claim higher wages when costs are rising, and it Is no use planning heroic j moves which would not suit the present mood of the people around us. j “One point that may bo mado ( against the compensating price is that j it may increase the cost of foodstuffs produced on the farm. To that it | may be said that New Zealanders buy j the cheapest food in all the AngloI Saxon countries. And the food the farmer produces has risen very little above the i'Jll level. “I believe we are resolving the question this way. It will not he asked. ’Can the community afford to help the farmer?’ tout, ‘Can the community afford not to help the farmer!’,” he concluded. The meeting unanimously passed a resolution affirming Ihe principle of a compensating price to bridge the gap between prices overseas and costs in Now Zealand.