FARMER'S BAN

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4845, 14 May 1936, Page 2

FARMER'S BAN

\J ' I 11 I DRESS CLOTHES MARK THE "DANDY." Farmers, so it has been said, are a privileged class; privileged always to grumble. Either the weather is too wet or it is too dry. Seldom it is what it should be. Now they have another grievance —or some of them have. This time it's clothes, dress clothes. Here is the secret. Evening dress was prescribed for the annual dinner of the National Farmers' Union in England. Against this edict, a protest was made recently at a meeting of the Somerset executive of the Union, held at Taunton. The protester was Mr John Joyce, a member of the National Council — and of the Milk Marketing Board. "We were requested o,n the invitation to wear evening dress," said Mr Joyce. "I didn't attend on principle. I should have had to buy a suit as well as a ticket. The wearing of evening dress comes from dandies with kid boots and such things." On Staying* in a Rut. • But Mr J. F. Broughton, another Council delegate, rose to defend the request. He thought that farmers should not lag behind any other class. " "*| "We didn't know much about dress suits in my younger days, but we mustn't stay in a rut. Our sons won't stand still," declared Mr John Stoate. Mr Joyce, as a parting shot, said that he understood that the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Walter Elliot) had hinted that farmers were wonderfully well dressed, as if extraordinarily well off, even if they had pleaded poverty. But what suits one does not suit another. .