HOW TO CREATE A PEASANTRY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 199, 21 July 1930, Page 6

HOW TO CREATE A PEASANTRY.

The Principal of the Feilding Agricultural School (Mr L. J. Wild) gave quite an interesting address at a meeting of Brunswick (Wanganui) fanners a few days ago. Incidentally he pointed out that the demands that New Zealand should get down to 25 acre farms might result in New Zealand farmers being reduced to a peasantry class as in the case of Denmark. On the one hand there is a clamour for the reduction in the area of farm holdings and on the other for an improvement of living conditions and social status. The warnings uttered by Mr Wild are timely; he rightly points out there is a grave danger of farmers in the Dominion being forced by conditions over which they have no control to become a peasantry with all its drudgery. In this connection it may be noted there is an awakening amongst the more intelligent of city and town people of the necessity for recognising the position primary producers should be able to maintain if the Dominion is to remain a prosperous country and, with their assistance, a peasantry class should be avoided. It is not possible for everyone to be an employer of labour, or even to be proprietor of the farm or business he is emplojud in; before a man can become his own master he must of necessity be first employed —unless he has the good fortune to inherit much wealth. And it is desirable there should be opportunities for employment on a farm as in a trade or business. If all holdings were reduced to one-man farms the ability to employ would cease and it is a certainty, in those circumstances, that unemployment would be just as troublesome as it is at present. It surely is no more of a crime for a man to own an area of land that enables him to employ labour than it is for a manufacturer or trader to have a sufficiently large business to employ labour. Farming is just as much a business as manufacturing any product is and it should be treated as such when discussing economic problems. Owing to its' geographical position and a very limited population primary production is of primary importance to every individual in the Dominion; consequently the man on the land should be better thought of than has been the case for some years past. However, there is an awakening which will be all for the good of the whole communit3 r .