THE SETTLER.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 101, 22 January 1908, Page 6

THE SETTLER.

Altuodg.li in general the dwellers in the cities are unable to fully understand the trials arid misfortunes of tlie people on the land, we are sure that the continued story of ruin and suffering which the extensive bush' and grass fires have left and are leaving in their wake has touched the hearts of all but the most callous. Day by day for many days the reports from the inferior have been of ruined homes, lands aid waste, pastures reduced to blackined deserts, bridges damaged, fences lestroyed, stock burned or suffocated, md settlers in many cases flying for heir lives. To those who have had experience of the fires, the floods, and he tempests that, oppose man's occupa-. ion of the soil, no written account iver seems at all adequate to impress heir full dreadf ulness; upon the mind if the townsman who Comfortably eaves to others the struggle with laked Nature. The sufferers from the ires, which are still raging,. have; the ympathy of the cities. r

But the disaster should do more thai merely create a feeling of commisera tion with the immediate sufferers. I should go far towards correcting a mosi unfortunate tendency" amongst certair classes of city folk. \Of late years a section of the discontented Radicals and Socialists' of the towns have been raising an outcry against the people in the country districts. With increasing vehemence they have clamoured against the farmer as a person pampered at: the expense of the city worker, and they have succeeded in forcing the Government to adopt a ■policy antagonistic in some respects to. the mai on the land. " The farmer," 1 they say in effect, "has nothing to do but sleep while his corn ripens and his sheep grow fat. He lives a happy and contented life, in surroundings at once wholesome and beautiful. . Year by year, with little more labour than is sufficient to keep his prosperity from spoiling his health, lie tickles an inexhaustibly bountiful' Nature into showering her riches upon him." Arid the eloquence v of the Socialists, the Labour leaders, and the Single-taxers is turned in the direction of showing what a particularly fortunate man the farmer is, and how- well he can afford to bear a heavier burden of taxation than at present endures. The farmer of to-day is often as pioneer, or ,the son of a pioneer, who has triumphed over the destructive forces of Nature. In any event, he is entirely dependent upon the forbearance of the Nature that has no terrors for the city Radical in his fortress of social shelter. Fire and flood are anxieties which the settler in this island cannot ignore inhis yearly reckoning. Even in peaceful Canterbury, where fire and flood are almost unknown terrors to the plains ■ farmer, the , cyclonic nor'wester often sweeps away in a night the . ripened grain or the young green corn. To your unthinking agitator, however, the farmer is a fat robber, or at best no better uian a parasite. Gradually the deepest-cutting of all our legislation is being, more and more straightly .aimed at his head, and the discouragements to land settlement are multiplied each year. If . the recent vivid testimony l to the misfortunes that the 6ettler has to contend with results in a tempering of , the! city Radical's | ancrer against the tiller of the soil, it will not have been entirely without its compensations. •.