Page 16 Advertisements Column 1

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19170, 29 November 1927, Page 16

AUCTIONS. H. MATSON AND CO. H. MATSON and CO., COMMISSION FARM SALESMEN, live by commissions. We ere indeed some factor in the trade. TO THE MAN ON THE LAND wo make a straight appeal and ask him not to forget the time we have been in business. (Extract from "London Times"). SELF-RELIANCE IN AGRICULTURE, rpHERE is little pleasant reading in the Jl fourth and last of our Agricultural correspondent's seasonal reports on the crops of the year which we publish to-day. With one or two local exceptions, this has keen the worst year for fanners that the longest living memory can recall. The l.ardships and anxieties of the situation fire aggravated by the irony of the fact that un'.il they were exposed to the incesmint and untimely rains of harvest and flay lime the yields both of corn and of hay were particularly good and abundant. As it is, both before and after cutting, they have lost much oE their virtue and their value. In some cases the destruction has been so extensive that they were not worth currying; in almoßt all the work of harvest- I ing lias b.cn unusually long and costly; and, to add to the farmers' troubles, the wet weather has thrown all field operalions out of joint. For numbers of farmers the chief legacy of the past season is a depressing prospect of sodden land 3 and a luxuriant growth of weeds, the combined effect, of which in itself threatens seriously to handicap the enterprise of the coming year. The outlook is, in fact, ho serious that some even of the most reputable farmers and stockowncrs in the country are losing heart. They are resolved, we aro told, to give up the business, either because they cannot afford to carry on, or in order to save what little capital they lave left. There may be a time, writes one of them, when farming will pay again, hut, he adds, "certainly not in tho near future, as far as I can see." At the present time you have WOOL. Why not send some of it to H. MATSON and CO. They have got the interests of the local realisation at heart and have fought the battles of local realisation for many years besides being responsible for tho first sale held in Canterbury. 'Phis is a hard saying. Its importance lies in the fact that it expresses the views nt a farmer of wide practical experience. It is quoted as a significant expression of an opinion which is probably shared by many others of similar standing. That, however, is not to say that it is necessarily correct. Tho one fact of all others which emerges from our agricultural correspondent's frank and uncompromising review of the past season is that the villain of the piece is tho weather, and the weather, as the Prime Minister hinted in his Cardiff speech, is a thing beyond the control of any Government. In other respects the Government have done much more for fanning and farmers than is generally realised They hove, as Mr Baldwin pointed out, made serious efforts to help the industry financially by reducing the burden of the Tatca on farm buildings as well as on land, by an annual grant of a million and a' half to the rural roads, and by the subsidy, amounting this year to four and a half millions, to the beet industry. Further subsidies it is not in their power, or in the power of any other pwty, to provide, and to ask for them is to cry for the . moon. Besides these substantial aids they propose to submit to Pnrliament next year a scheme for making ir.ore credit availablo to farmers. Bu» they cannot) possibly insure the industry against the recurrence of bad seasons—"this terrible harvest weather we have had this year." If the' early promise of this year's crops had been fulfilled, the gloomy prophecy relegating the day when farming may again become a paying concern to a remote future would in all probability never have been made. Fanners of all men are bound by, tho exigencies and teaching of _ their work to take long and not short-sighted views of its prospects. They have to do with the rotations of good and bad seasons ai well as of crops. At the present moment they are passing through a period of depression of perhaps unexampled severity. But the industry haß been hard hit by cnlaraities nearly if not quite as disastrous YOU, want to buy . RAPE AND ITALIAN for green feed as it is essential that this year you must put them in. The sooner you take your lambs away from the ewe and put them on to green feed the better, as your ewe has had a bad season, and she requires a thorough spell before next year. .H. MATSON and CO. before, and has survived them, and those engaged in it now can hardly hope _to promote its prosperity by making up their minds that the rejurn of the good times will be so long deferred as to necessitate a feeling of despair. - Reflections of this kind, no doubt, are cold comfort to men who are losing their money in the struggle and who have to face the risks of bankruptcy. But in farming, more almost than in any other British enterprise, courage, endurance, and self-reliance are an immemorial tradition, and, for the sake of agriculture and its inestimable value to the life of the nation, it is a matter of great importance that the tradition should never be allowed to die out. The best hope for the future of agriculture lies, in fact, in tho determination of all concerned in it t/> do everything in their individual and corporate power to enable it t.> stand on its own feet The real help must como from within and not from without, from action rather than from legislation. A notable example of a promising effort in this direction is reported to J — •'- a message from our correspondent i <lal. Some months ago Lord Henry Cavendish Beutjnck, Lord Lieutenant of Westmoreland, suggested in these columns that the lord lieutenant of each county should convene a meeting of farmers and landowners in his area to consider what practical steps can bo taken to form combinations—which he claimed were vital to the lift, of the country— the marketing of agricultural produce. As the result of - YOUR LAMBS have been going back for the last twelve weeks and a checked lamb takes something to start it. Many aro indolent enough to leave the lambs with the owes, expecting to fatten them off the ewes. Can it be done a season like this? Turn over your ground and put in green feed, spoil your ewe, therefore ensuring your next season's crop of lambs and you will fatten your lambs and get them away this season without exhausting your farm and pasture lands. H. MATSON and CO. meeting which he himself convened on Saturday at Kendal—when a paper on the subject was read by Mr A. D. Street, head of the Markets and Co-operation branch of the Ministry of Agriculture—a committee representative of the National Farmers' Union, the Lunesdale Farmers' Society, and the landowners' organisation has been formed for its further consideration. Mr Street was careful to point out that better marketing is not to be regarded as a sovereign remedy, for agricultural de- ) ore ion, and does not mean the replacing of the existing machinery of distribution by a farmer-owned co-operative systom, v-hich would probably break down under iti own weight. He agrees, that is to say, with Mr Baldwin that though better marketing is not a complete cure it is a necessity for any agriculture, whether depressed or prosperous, and holds further that its proper use is to aid the existing machinery of distribution to work to greater advantage, so far as home produce is concorned, than it does to-day. The co-opera-tive assembling of produce in the areas ol surplus production he regards as the legitimate and profitable sphere of the producer; group marketing, he says, is or should be, more efficient than marketing by individual ]> reducers in regard to such services as the preparation, classing, grading, packing, and dispatch of supplies, as well as in the search for outlets and the orderly feeding of markets. Only in exceptional cases can even the large-scale producer, as an individual, market a standard agricultural product continuously and in commercial quantities; as a general rule the ungraded contributions o: individual producers must first be assembled at convenient oentres in order to provide the bulk necessary for the grading process and for the maintenance of graded output. SEND US your orders for OORNSAOKS and BINDER TWINE. What other stock agents sell at we sell at. H. MATSON and CO. From this Mr Street went on to say that the greatest problem which confronts the British farmer in the marketing fields is that of devising a workable system for the standardisation of his products. Because of its superior economy the standardisation of grades and, where applicable, of containers, he considers an inevitable reform. Both in foreign countries and in the Dominions its beneficial effect in the stimulation of production and of demand has been clearly proved, and it must infallibly be made the ruling principle by home producers for the home market. In this country it appears thai the best line of advance would be for the Ministry to suggest standards Mgarded as nitaUa in Urn light of track sspsrienos,