THE FARMER'S LOT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 192, 16 August 1939, Page 18

THE FARMER'S LOT.

The farmers and their wives think they are the only ones who work hard. They have had this idea for so long now that it is part of their constitution. They all prate about the pioneer farmers, who worked so hard and saved and bought a little home or a big estate, as the case may be. They never think of the poor under-paid, overworked farm hand who helped, but out of his small wages was only able to buy hobnailed boots and denims and occasional slop-made suit for best. These men do the hardest and roughest work, while the farmer, of course, does a share, but not the narclest. Yet he takes all the praise, and his wife thinks she's a martyr. Many town women have far harder work than farmers' wives. I came from a district of small farms, and in no case did the wife go into the milking sheds. One farmer, who had a herd of cows, always looked around for some poor little P.W.D. school child (not his own) to go and do his milking. He used to get two or three boys to milk, and they got free milk for their parents and a shout to the pictures on Saturdays. This farmer no doubt classed himself as a hardworking man. I knew of a young man who left his father's farm to take a job in a town factory. I asked him if he disliked farm life, and he said no, but the city work was twice the pay. He stayed at this job one week, and complained all the time about the awful noise of the machinery and the conditions. Finally he said "only people with no brains could work in such conditions," and back he went to the farm. So you see we townies must have more grit to 6tick at some jobs. Take the P.W.D. men. They work at the hardest of work, some of them cracking rocks and hewing out solid cliffs. These men generally work in gangs and share the pay. Xo loafer is wanted with them. Yet the farmer squeals about the loafers on the public works.

The farmers are not the only ones that have slaved and saved. •Tuet as many town women have done the same, but they have not \had the chance to get rich on their employees' work, as so many farmers have. Town workers are just as important a part of New Zealand's backbone. There may be shirkers, but they are amongst the farmers, too. I often think that these people who cannot stand up to hard work are not lazy. Many are not strong, the fruit of under-fed or wrongly fed generations. As for the poor old wharfie, what slurs lie gets. I have often watched them work, as we lived near a wharf. I have often thought of galley slaves when I have seen them working j n their halfnude state. These men have to be of the toughest and strongest type. I have never seen them loafing, but rather working always at high pressure.

A PIOXEER'S DAUGHTER.