FARMERS' UNION

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 132, 7 June 1939, Page 18

FARMERS' UNION

NO PITY WANTED

* REPLY TO CRITICISM

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) DUNEDIN, June 6. The attitude of the Prime Minister and members of: Cabinet towards the president of the New Zealand Farmers' Union, Mr. W. W. Mulholland, was the subject of brief comment today at the annual conference of the Otago branch of the union. Mr. Mulholland, who addressed the conference himself, dismissed Mr. Savage's comments lightly, remarking that they were "of no importance." The conference refuted the Prime Minister's statement that Mr. Mulhol-land-did not represent the farmers of the Dominion. "Mr. Savage has said that Mr. Mulholland does not represent the farmers of New Zealand," said the chairman, Mr. R. H. Michelle. "I say he does. (Applause.) :; "Mr. Savage has said that if Mr. Mulholland does represent the farmers of New Zealand he feels sorry for them. I would tell him that the farmers do not want any pity." Mr. Mulholland opened his address by reviewing the position of the New Zealand Farmers' Union today. Under its first president, Sir James Wilson, it had a maximum membership of a,bout 10,000. Mr. G. W. Leadley was president for a year, and was succeeded by Mr. W. J. Poison. In the latter's term the membership had risen to 20,000. Since then it had risen another 10,000. When the membership was 1000 the Government knighted its president; when the membership was 20,000 it occasionally said nasty things about him; now that the membership was 30,000, there had been attacks on its president by Cabinet Ministers twice in one week. WHEAT MARKETING SCHEME. It was not the president of the union that was being attacked, Mr. Mulholland said." The growing power of the organisation was worrying the Ministers; At the same time it was not enough that the membership of 30,000 should draw .the Government's fire. A membership of 50,000 was needed, so that the Government would "not be game to attack the union as it does now." "I am not going to refer very much to what Mr. Savage has said," Mr. Mulholland mentioned, "because it is of no importance. Speaking to workers in a boot factory the' other day, he explained all the sins of the Farmers' Union president. He had been asked j the previous day to attend a farmers' conference, but he was too busy. "He made great play with.the fact that I am interested in the wheat marketing scheme. Presumably he was trying to indicate that I am inconsistent in being connected with the wheat j marketing scheme, while I am not in favour of a guaranteed price for meat and wool. He may be under the misapprehension that I am more interested in wheat than I am in meat and wool. That is by no means correct. "If the Government could offer a scheme for meat and wool as serviceable as the wheat scheme I would be 'all for it' I oppose the proposed scheme because I cannot see how the farmer can benefit from it. I would give my full support to a serviceable scheme."