PEGGING FARM LABOUR

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 249, 18 July 1942, Page 6

PEGGING FARM LABOUR

The announcement that the War Cabinet had agreed to peg manpower on the farms, and recall farmers and essential farm workers from the military forces, indicates a somewhat belated official recognition of a problem that has been causing the primary producers considerable alarm. A national war effort is not divisible, but there must be, in connexion with everything where the supply is definitely limited, an order of priority of importance, and while the struggle continues that condition will obtain. Manpower is one of the essentials with a strict limit, and the problem is how best to utilize the volume available in order that the national effort may reach its maximum. Probably it would be as well to regard the announcement made by Mr. Polson as something in the nature of a standstill order, and not as a final state. The position here, and the test to be applied in connexion with farm labour, are to .some extent similar in character to those of the munitions firms in Great Britain. There, after many plans and intensive organization, it was decided that employment in the manufacture of munitions —and nothing could have been more important at the time—would not, in itself, exempt a man from military service. It had to be proved that the work he was actually doing was essential, that is, of such a character as to justify his retention on the 'job. Similarly it does not follow that because a man works on a farm he can, or should, be exempted from military service. New Zealand must apply the system adopted in the Mother Country and make the test an individual one.

The order which now obtains in the Dominion with respect to farm labour will be regarded as establishing the conditions in which the individual test can be applied, and in that direction it should be of practical value. As the plans for returning country girls and youths to thei farms progress then it may prove possible to release more and more men of military age for service in the Forces.- In the meantime their presence on the farms will do much to ensure that production is maintained, and possibly increased. There seems to be a greater prospect of the problem being brought within manageable dimensions by this method. Instead of denuding the farms of labour it will give the time for replacement plans to be developed, and the transfers. of fit men for defence purposes to be made in such a way that the vital task of production will not be imperilled.