THE FARMER AND LABOUR.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 78, 2 April 1913, Page 6

THE FARMER AND LABOUR.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Although I come from a farming family, who came out to New Zealand in the very early days, I am not like most of the small farmers, opposed to the labour movement. This is because I have knocked about all over the country following various occupations, and have had my eyes opened as to laboxir not being the small farmers' enemy but that of the large runholders. The sooner the small fry recognise this, the better it will be for them to join forces with labour, and direct all their attention towards the big fellow travelling about the Continent while workers and small fry are making the land valuable. Instead of combining with labour, the small man decides to remain as he is and be crushed between the two forces of the large landholder and the "worker, like being flattened through ' a mangle. If he were to combine with labour, and concentrate against the few "who own New Zealand, thus breaking up the large estates, he would get his land at a more reasonable price. Also, where there are now so many applicants per section under Government tenure, if the whole of the land were available for the masses the applicants per section would be reduced, aad the applicant would not be so often disappointed. I think it would be wise for the small farmers to throw in their lot with labour, because, after all, we know who are the means of carrying on a strike, which sometimes tbe small farmers can ill afford to enter into alongside the autocrats and lords of the soil of New Zealand.—l am, etc., ' A MINER.