The Franklin Times PUBLISHED EVERY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, AND FRIDAY AFTERNOON. MONDAY, JULY 4, 1927. FARMERS' RETURNS.

Franklin Times, Volume XVII, Issue 75, 4 July 1927, Page 4

The Franklin Times PUBLISHED EVERY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, AND FRIDAY AFTERNOON.

MONDAY, JULY 4, 1927. FARMERS' RETURNS.

Office and Works: HALL STREET, PUKEKOHE. Telephone No. 2. P.O. Box 14. "We nothing extenuate, nor aught set down in malice."

THE danger of arguing upon a subject with an incomplete knowledge of the attendant circumstances was shown one evening recently, when, at the reunion of the Post and Telegraph services at Palmerston, the organiser, Mr. IT. H. Brown, set out to show howmuch better off the farmers were today than in 1914, and how much worse off, in. comparison, the employees of the P. and T., and, inferentially, Government employees generally. We do not wish it to be understood that Mr. Brown was attacking the farmers, or even that he was grudging them the unexampled prosperity lie evidently considers they are enjoying. He was merely combating remarks made by Mr.-Poison, Dominion president of the Farmers' Union, going to show thai | Government employees as a body were doing better than the fanners who had to provide the money from which they are paid. There would be no necessity to take much notice of Mr. Brown's remarks were it not for the fact that , the Press has broadcast Fiis figures all , over the Dominion, and at first glance many people may fail to pee how misleading the inferences he draws from \ • them really are. : I He bases his argument entirely upon I I the fact that while New Zealand in 1914 exported farm produce to the value of nearly £24,000,000. the same item had risen by 1920 to nearly £51,000,000, and that consequently the return to the farmer had more than ' doubled, whereas wages in his Depar.tr. merit had increased by only 34 per cent. It would he as reasonable to argue that if double the length of foje-

graph line were erected, in 1926 as compared with 1914, that therefore the men employed in the work should receive double the rate of pay. The fact is, of course, that Mr. Brown has only seen the cost-of-living aspect' of the case, and does not reflect that not only docs" this factor affect the farmer just as much as it does the State employee, but thai there are: a number of other factors that injuriously affect the one class, while leaving the other comparatively untouched. The obvious position is that., the cost of production has so enormously increased that the profits from farming are less to-day than they were in 1914. The production was not doubled, for instance, without a heavyexpenditure of capital, and'the farmer has to pay that capital its wages in, the shape of interest... Rates, land-taxj and other charges that fall ! solely >on :'the landowner have increased out -of ; ' all proportion to the. farmer's returns/ and, in spite of the fact that, so much is extracted from him for road-making, the cost of transportation, an important item to -him, has largely increased during the period under review. ~ . I To make his case good, Mr. Brown would have to show, not .. that;; ,tha' farmer's gross returns wer'e Idt'gtfrvMt that the share of his'returns he is'able'' to keep for himself was greater. This: he is totally unable.to do. -He /would only have to live for a while in a farming community to understand' that the farmer's position to-day is a most difficult one, chiefly on account of the extraordinary demands that are made on his earnings to enable a wage based on the cost of living, and not on the yalue of the work done, to be paid generally.