FARMERS' PHALANX.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 172, 23 July 1929, Page 10

FARMERS' PHALANX.

UNION ORGANISATION.

"NEVER SO NECESSARY."

MR. POLSON'S EXHORTATION.

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent;.) WELLINGTON, this day. With, ; th& membership of the New Zealand Farmers' Union standing higher than ever before, Mr. W. J. Poison, M.P., the president, told the .Dominion conference of the union to-day that at no time before has organisation been so necessary as it is now. " This is an age of organisation," Mr. Poison said. " We arc surrounded by it. Not only are there organisations of labour and of employers in industry, but

great organisations of capital, all intent on safeguarding their own interests. Combination is opposed by merger, merger by amalgamation, amalgamation by cartel, cartel by union, and union by association. "The farming community need cool heads and stern hearts if they are to hold their own. In this peculiarly primary producing country, where the whole import wealth of the people rests upon successful production from the soil, and where our market is half a world away, this is particularly true. We have to maintain our organisation at all costs." Later in his presidential address, Mr. Poison said, "I have worked for one object, and one object only, to so consolidate the farmers of New Zealand that they would become like the old Roman phalanx, a great united *orce with a common object—the government of this country so as ( to reduce the farmer's handicaps and clear away his obstacles, and so enable him to achieve his destiny and create that high and lasting prosperity which makes for peace and happiness on earth."