Ashburton Wheat-Growers.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18591, 16 January 1926, Page 12

Ashburton Wheat-Growers.

But for the extraordinary speech of Mr W. T. Lill we should have had no more to say of the meeting at Ashburton yesterday than that it afforded further striking evidence of the soundness of the policy advocated by " The Press." The resolution which was carried, and carried unanimously—even Mr Lill did not oppose it —shows that farmers have at last realised what a blunder was made on

their Uehalf two or three weeks ago; and our whole desire since that blunder was committed has been to undo it. But although he did not oppose the resolution Mr Lill said that he " did not see for the life of " him why wheat should not be con- " trolled." He would, however, see this quite clearly if in his sixty years of wheat-growing and public oratory he had allowed himself a little more leisure to study the facts of politics. Nearly eveiy other wheat-grower can see now, if Mr Lill cannot, that if the Government had promised control for a period of years without there being legislative provision for. it, and at the end of a few years a huge surplus I occurred, with, perhaps, another Government in office, the new Government neither would nor could pay the high control price, and the old Government would be blackguarded for having promised something beyond its power to grant. Nor need there be any anxiety at all about "where growers " would be with the subsidy [proposed "by Mr Gould] if there were a " million bushel surplus." They would simply be in this position, that they would receive the subsidy on every bushel, and would be to the extent of that subsidy so much better off than if there were none. If there were so large a surplus prices would of course be low, but a low price with a subsidy would make farmers very much happier than a-low price and nothing else at all. As for Mr Lill's statement that the Editor of I

" The Press," not being a wheatgrower, is not entitled to have an opinion on the wheat problem, it is surprising that a grown man should have said anything so childish, and quite astonishing that it should have been said by a man with sixty years' experience of the soil behind him and the conviction in his hea& that he is a guide to his younger brethren. The average farmer has enough commonsense to see that the right way is the right way whoever points it out to hinj 4 that the th§

wisdom of some of those who have been allowed to guide him in the past can be gauged from the mess into which they have led him.