The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1930. IRATE FARMERS.

Evening Star, Issue 20591, 17 September 1930, Page 8

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1930. IRATE FARMERS.

Pehusai, of the discussion at the Farmers’ Union meeting in Dunedin yesterday might suggest that, in the opinion of the man on the land, politics is the greatest bar to the country’s recovery. Farmers as a class are fully of the fact that the primary producing industries have made New Zealand what it is, and that it is those industries which must bo relied on to bring back prosperity. But they complain that on almost every hand they are fettered by the effects of misgovernmQnfc and cannot set about the good work. From tho tone of the remarks it is evident that expectations of improvement in market prices for our exports have been definitely abandoned as a harmful form of self-deception. Tho alternative is increased production at lower costs. One speaker declared that we could not increase our exports very much. This would seem to imply that the limits of this country’s productive powers have been reached or are being approached. This cannot be accepted. For what other purpose is the big fertilizer plant now beipg erected near Dunedin than to enable far bigger returns to be taken off a given area ? In the South the farmer has been far slower to appreciate the results obtainable from top-dressing than his northern confrere; but there are undoubted signs that there is an awakening to its possibilities, and most likely necessity will push this development ahead much faster than would otherwise have been the case. Quite apart from this there is the question of utilisation of land to the full. One of the complaints made yesterday was the difficulty of obtaining money to enable farmers to carry on. Another was the high cost of production, which really centres round the cost of farm labour. Again and again farmers have declared that the wages demanded in the country have forced them to let a considerable amount of work go undone. These two facts —the shortage of working capital and tho dispensing with any labour except what is absolutely indispensable—inevitably imply that under present conditions the holdings of many farmers are too large for them. A great many of those intimate with land questions unhesitatingly declare this to be an undoubted fact. The Government has recently made an earnest attempt to revive land settlement. It has purchased a big acreage, mostly of the larger holdings remaining of land suitable for close settlement, but tho number of new settlers seems disproportionate to the outlay. Nowadays this process is very expensive. At the time of purchase the Government’s buying agents wore convinced that they had never exceeded reasonable prices, and that the success of the subdivisions was assured. We doubt, however, whether by now that feeling of confidence has not been rudely shaken. At any rate outside experts profess themselves unable to see how , men can succeed on what in practically every case must bq regarded as high-priced land in view of the decline in markets since its acquisition. Truer economy might have been a close investigation of smaller holdings, yet too big for the occupiers to develop with the resources at command, and a redistribution that would provide the farmer with capital to fully exploit a reduced area well within his powers, while providing a small holding for a newcomer.,

Farmers are relentlessly hostile to the arbitration system. They are once more suspicious of designs of its extension to farm labour, which would add still more to their costs of production, already undoubtedly raised to their present level by the operation of that system in other industries. The freezing industry is the one usually quoted as the signal example, and as the market for New Zealand frozen lamb is the notable exception to other export markets on which our producers depend, their anxiety for the welfare of the freezing companies now under heavy stress is quite understandable. It is the farmers’ belief, well or ill founded, that if they constituted an all-embracing country party they could have the Arbitration Act repealed. But efforts to break existing party ties among the rural community have never gone far. There seems, however, to be a disposition to end the truce under which farmers’ unions have proclaimed themselves non-political organisations. One speaker yesterday strongly advocated the abolition of the party system of government, declaring that so long as it lasted any Government would be powerless to effect economies, however much it had the will to do so. There appears to be no doubt whatever in the farmers’ minds that a reduction in the public expenditure is a first essential, and that it is unlikely to be achieved unless the farming community unites and insists upon it. Mr Christie’s description of administration in high places was anything but flattering—“ leg pulling,” “ glibtongued,” “ blockheads,” “ brass hats,” etc., with the inevitable concomitant of a taxation which all are resolved cannot and shall not be increased. Many times the Government has advised the fanner to reduce bis costs of production; now the farmer is turning round and telling the Government to reduce its costs of administration. Unfortunately there are coming to light many instances of bad spending of public money. Some of those works which have been completed are under suspicion of having been ill-con-coived; and on others which are in progress value is not being obtained for the money. There is perhaps no shrewder judge than the farmer as to the question of a manual worker being worth his pay, and one of them yesterday characterised the co-operative system on public works as a scandalruinous to the public purse and demoralising to the men employed. And the fanner has at last awakened to the cost of railway construction, and on whom it must ultimately fall. There was a time in the history of the dominion when the whole country was dotted with railway leagues. _ These were to force on a rather unwilling Government the opening up of the country by a network of lines. Fanners were prominent in those leagues, and were apt to become indignant when too rigorous an analysis was made of the financial prospects of such extensions. A policy of dissipation of effort in construction delayed completion until these railways had a belated start in competition with the road transport which had developed meantime. An outstanding case in our own district is tho Lawrence-Roxburgh line. And, while- farmers are rightly insisting on a reduction of expenditure by the Government, they might be reminded that they could lower tho deficit by patronising their own railway system. It is not an unheard of thing for a farmer to avail himself of the free carriage of lime on the railways and to let his use of them end there. Without in the least deprecating the value of farmers’ criticism of the administration of New Zealand, one might commend a remark passed by Lord Bledisloe in his speech in Wellington yesterday: “Prudent Government finance is not the only road to national prosperity. Self-help is at least as important, coupled with clear vision and a sense of relative values.” His Excellency gave it as his opinion that, “the greatest perils facing this dominion in the future are, in the first place, too great a dependence upon the Government to undertake tasks which are more appropriate for individual enterprise and the employment of individual capital, and in the second place the drift of population from the countryside into the towns. The former threatens to kill New Zealand’s personal initiative and sound industrial development: the latter to kill New Zealand herself. ” It is for that reason that the attention of townspeople should- be directed to such discussions as yesterday’s by the Fanners' Union, for from them can bo gleaned reasons why the call of the land is not so insistent as it should be or as it used to be—reasons, that is, supplementary to the diminished margin of profit duo to falling prices of products.