COMBINING FARMERS’ ORGANIZATIONS

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 205, 27 May 1944, Page 6

COMBINING FARMERS’ ORGANIZATIONS

Future Possibilities REPLY TO SHEEPOWNERS’ PRESIDENT (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) WANGANUI, .May 26. “The members of the Wanganui provincial executive of the Farmers’ Union are not such innocents abroad as Mr. James Begg, president of the New Zealand Sheepowners’ Federation, would have the Dominion believe,” said Mr. R. O. Montgomerie, a member of the Wanganui executive, replying to the statement by .Mr. Begg, reported in a Press Association message from Dunedin yesterday. , . , “In moving the resolution to which Mr. Begg has taken exception, I mentioned that the farmers’ federation was an organization in name only, and that it would be an extravagance to call it a skeleton organization, for it possesses neither the backbone (that is, the membership) nor the stomach (that is, the finance) with which to become the saviour of our great farming industry, ’ said Mr. Montgomerie. “It is Mr. Begg who is behind the times, in that he seems to be unaware of the Land Sales Act and the Local Bodies Election and Polls Amendment Act, and be unaware of the further threat .that lies ahead. The Wanganui Farmers’ Union realizes that this amalgamation with the Sheepowners’ Federation is a step in building a real flesh and blood farmers’ federation that alone can protect the farmers’ interests. “In such a federation,” Mr. Montgomerie continued, “the wool men, of whom Mr. Begg has made mention, would have undisputed authority over all sheep-farm-ing affairs with the really effective support of the greater body to press home the representations of the sheep section. I even envisage such a federation with a farmer president on an almost full.-time job at £l2OO to £l5OO a year, with an adequate honorarium to every member of the national executive, and a brain at the back of such body at a salary up to £6OOO a year. Only then could the rank and file of members feel that their future was not going to be one of economic serfdom.

“We have seen too much already of the utter ineffectiveness of the present separate farmers’ organizations. The Wanganui province, by the tenor of its discussion, showed that it had reached the stage when it expects deeds not words from an organization which has every farmer as a member. The farmers of New Zealand are looking to Mr. Begg to assist them in this urgent and worthy objective.”