The Northern Advocate Daily “NORTHLAND FIRST” WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 1938. Wooing The Farmer

Northern Advocate, 25 May 1938, Page 4

The Northern Advocate Daily “NORTHLAND FIRST”

WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 1938. Wooing The Farmer

Registered for transmission through the post as a Newspaper

FROM the remarks of the Prime Minister, when opening Pie interprovincial. conference of the Farmers’ Union at Welling' ton yesterday, it is apparent that the Government intends making a big* bid to recapture the support of the farmer before the election. Apart from the half-million surplus in the D airy Account, which is being dangled temptingly before the farmer’s nose, Mr Savage has now frankly intimated that his Government will accede to practically any suggestion for ameliorating the present discontent in rural areas. t One such suggestion is that the guaranteed price, instead of being fixed by the Minister of Finance and his advisers, should be lixed by a tribunal presided over by a Supreme Court Judge. This suggestion is embodied in a remit to the conference, and Mr Savage assured the delegates that if the farmers would be satisfied with such a. tribunal to lix the price, he would see that they got it. Actually, the proposal is obviously one that should appeal to the Government. Such a tribunal would absolve it from direct responsibility for a most contentious decision. It would be able to.blame the tribunal when things went wrong, and could take the credit to itself when they went right. Thus this particular proposal stands to benefit the Government as much as the farmers. The objections in principle to the present guaranteed price system would still remain. Touching lightly upon the widespread criticism of these features. Mr Savage appeal’s to admit that they are not ill-grounded, stating, in regard to the present system of price fixation, that he “would not say the results were all they might have been.” It would seem that the Government believes its position is precarious, and that it is now prepared to go to almost any length to propitiate the farmer. ■ The proposed cash distribution of this year’s surplus in the Dairy Account sacrifices one of the fundamental principles of Mr Nash’s original scheme, in which a surplus one year would be employed to counter-balance a deficit in another year. Now, presumably, whenever there is a surplus, it will be distributed among the farmers, and whenever there is a deficit the general taxpayer will have to make it up. Whether the Government can win over the farmer with gifts and blandishments remains to be seen. The wise elector, whether rural, or urban, will not over-estimate the value of election year promises and repentances. Farmers must ask themselves whether or not a Government so heavily committed as this one is to the principle of less work for more money, can he completely sincere in its undertaking to keep costs within bounds. They must ask, too. whether the principle of socialisation, of the means of production as part of the general Socialistic goal towards which the Government is .marching, will not eventually reach a position where it may conflict acutely with that “rugged individualism” which lias ever been the farmer’s precious inheritance. Finally, the decision is one that the farmers themselves must make, in full awareness of the fact that the Government’s fate is virtually in their hands. Ignoring specious promdses, they have to determine their own destinies, and, in doing so, that of their country as well.