THE FARMERS' DOUBLE LOAD

Northland Age, Volume 26, Issue 9, 23 June 1926, Page 4

THE FARMERS' DOUBLE LOAD

“Issachar is a Strong Aw bowed beneath Two Burdens.”

[By “Kerikiri”!

Let us climb an eminence and view the whole land. We shall take a wide outlook — wide in scope and wide in time. Forty years ago, as now we should have looked down from this spot on a farming population of individualists. Every man played and plays for his own hand. The collective interest of the industry is—comparatively to the keen interest displayed on either hand by Capitalistic and Labour Associations almost utterly neglected. Wealth only comes from production. Fooling around with money values may makeone class rich and another class poor, but adds notone stiver to the wealth of the nation.

Goods may be ecenomicaUy produced or they may be produced at a loss —above the world’s average cost of production. Those articles which are produced economically, can, in normal times, find an export market somewhere ; but only where the gambling element enters, as in a search for precious metals, production long continue if it does not “pay.” A local market may, of course, be provided at the cost of the general taxpayer, which, in the long run, is merely at the cost of economic production. That wealth-producing side which “pays” has to carry the losses. Fencing the national paddock with a protective tariff, or natural obstacles to impertation —the “sheltered industries” —allow a hothouse growth of costs and values within the country, a growth which can only find its natural remedy in long years by overcrowding of the industries affected, the general detriment. Viewed in this way, the only economic production in New Zealand is in the primary industries —in the farming and allied industries. Forty years ago, as now, three persons on the land (assuming 'the county and small town population as being all landsmen, which is far from the fact), kept two persons going in the towns. The two were getting on better than the three even then, for although the natural rate of inorease in the county exceeds the town rate, the town population increased rather more rapidly than the county rate. The statisticians of those days pointed out that many of those in the boroughs were really engaged in rural occupations, so that the position was not so dusty. Three men sent away wool, butter, frozen meat etc., to buy the manufactured and outside goods needed by all five. They also maintained the two townsmen in locally-produced food, the townsmen returning to them community service, in the transport, commercial and professional walks of life. The banks handled the country’s credit, produced by the three rural workers’ exports, and financed the country’s imports. Matters were regulated, more or less, by the law obsupply and demand, Agencies, merchants’ associations, the Arbitration Act, and the protective tariff not having as yet kicked the good old law tc death. We shall take it that there are still three men on the land. They are producing at the world’s rate of money values, under a free market, more than eight times what they produced for exporl forty years ago. They have now also to produce tor four and ahalf townsfolk, who are to-day muchmoreexpensive individually than they were ot old. So the three men who kept five (including themselves) now maintain seven and a-quarter, and the services which used to be renderec to the time rural dwellers by £ couple of citizens are now rendered by four men and a boy, wht fill up the rest of their time anc energy in serving themselves. The four adults and one juvenile of the dies quarrel amongst themselves more than a little Every time they make up theii quarrels, they do so at the expense ,of a little more piled on the coun try folk —the ass of our sub-title When Mr. Labour-Union has a rise, Mr. Employer balances the other side with an increased pro fit brick. Capital loads one side of the donkey and weights one pannier, whilst Labour attends tc the other. The balancing is £ work of art. Everyone seems ,satisfied that the ass will keep or ’-keeping on. For how long ? Hi is a strong ass ; but he will hardly keep up the pace now that his jesters are shedding his foddei wv make room for their rubbish BVen if he doesn’t kick, and some

say there is no kick in him, but ■ you can never trust an ass’s heels, J he is due to collapse some day 1 He is still delivering his goods 1 but he is doing so at the expense VI of his own condition. His bosses will be well advised to kt*p his strength up, to give him a little more feed. What can we do about this rush of men and money to the towns ? How can we more fully develop that quarter ot the country which 1 is scheduled as “sown,” much of which is hardly touched ? How can we reduce to cultivation some of the three parts as yet untouched? Surely not by grizzling about the “loss of pioneering spirit in the prerent generation” ! Surely not by refusing to allow for housr ing in our settlement schemes ? Surely not by restricting adtfnces on rural lands whilst advancing freely on bricks and mortar, by providing a worse grade of education for country children than for others, by neglecting medical

attention, by piling the cost of motorists’ roads, charitable aid, etc., on an already overburdened land! Our politicians should go back to the old copy-book maxim and try “Kindness to animals” in their very best Vere Foster style. Since Adam delved and Eve ! span, it has never failed with the j country dweller, however much j may have been vainly spilt j the cities. Cease to bend all j our resources to attract men from j the land and put the reverse gear in. Attract them there. We have not said and we 4o | not believe that the panniers are | unnecessary. Capital and Labour have each their proper place ; in the scheme of things, but uneconomic or overpaid Capital is a curse, and uneconomic or overpaid Labour is Slso a curse. Which produces which is about as profitable a discussion as the old proposition as to the right of priority of the hen and the egg. In New Zealand, at least, Capital lives, moves, and has its being by virtue of the land. By far the greater portion of the valuation i of New Zealand is its land value. | Nor is Labour, so called, any i more intrinsically important than ! Capital, for by far the greatest ; part, and all the export, of our i “labour” or “work” is from the I land. , Our’s is not a household. The kids are as to which of them shall run if, •the old-man is locked out ot the discussion. Both the kids should have been spanked and put in* their proper places long ago, in which case there had been no need to call the old-man names.