IDENTICAL INTERESTS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 95, 22 April 1926, Page 8

IDENTICAL INTERESTS

Farmers and commercial men do not see eye to eyo in everything. perhaps that is too much to hope for; but members of the Chamber of Commerce must have felt gratified last evening when Mr. Nosworthy, Minister of Finance, assured them, "I have always felt sympathetic towards the commercial community.'' He also added that his sympathy extended to those who earn their livings in the citic3 equally with those whose livelihood is directly concerned with husbandry. Mr. Nosworthy will forgive us for suggesting that those who work and dwell in the towns and cities have at times felt a want of syrhpathy from the party of which he has long been a prominent member. , It is a commonplace that in this Dominion interests of town and country are identical, but all the same there are people who require to be constantly reminded of tho fact. Mr. Nosworthy himself, last evening, saw the need for its reiteration, and said so. If these town and country interests in keeping the Dominion prosperous are inseparable, then it is due to them that the Government, no matter what its party colour, should convince both that it holds, or endeavours to hold, the scales' of justice even. Politicians have dinned it into the ears of farmers that they are the "backbone of the country." So they are. But where would they be with their produce on the farm without the assistance of all engaged in turning it into money?—railwaynien, bank and insurance clerks, storemen, watcrsiders and seamen, to say nothii.g of others engaged in supplying farmers' needs, and who composo, in the main, the people who dwell in cities? This great army of servants of primary producers naturally resents being described as "parasites." Such objectionable descriptions, it is true, have been applied only by loose-thinking, loosetongued people, but their use is not the way by which Tjwii and Country can be brought closer together and made to see that each would be helpless without the other. Only in their unanimity and co-operation can the welfare of the Dominion bo maintained and further improved. This should go without saying when "those people who have to earn their living in the cities" have no reason to fear undue discriminatory legislation.