THE FARMER’S LOT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22719, 4 November 1935, Page 8

THE FARMER’S LOT

With a peculiar contrariness, critics of the National Government who used to delight in describing it as a “farmers’ Government” now accuse it of having done virtually nothing at all to assist the hard-pressed man on the land. Both the Labour Party and the Democrats profess to know of better ways of assisting the farmer than those employed by the Government to tide him over the lean years. They also know that his vote will be useful, since rural electorates cannot be wrested from the Government othorwiso than through the support of the voters who live in them. The obvious thing to do, therefore, is to persuade the farmer that, so far as the Government is concerned, he is the “ forgotten man,” and that as the Government goes out by the back door prosperity for the producer will step over the front porch. So Labour and the Democrats cry havoc and respectively woo the country voter with promises of guaranteed prices and export subsidies. As an example of the nonsense talked by opponents of the Government, there is the statement made by Mr F. Jones on Saturday evening that not one-tenth of the Government’s recovery legislation has been of any use to the farmer, whose position is still “hopeless.” Interest reduction has apparently been of no use to him, nor mortgage adjustment, nor the high exchange rate, nor the continuance of free markets for meat and the products of the dairy farm. Mr T. Golden, the National Government candidate, for the Mata ura electorate, is a farmer of wide experience, with an extensive knowledge of rural local body administration. He knows what the' fanner has had to contend with, and he knows also the value of the steps taken to soften the impact of the depression on the farming community. In a speech at Kelso, which we report in this issue, he reviews the Government’s remedial legislation sanely, and has no hesitation in declaring that results have more than justified the exceptional methods adopted to keep struggling farmers on their holdings and to maintain their solvency. Mr Golden touches on the relief given by means of the reduction of interest charges, rates and rent, discusses the mortgage legislation and other major rural enactments, and reminds farmers that

they have also had the benefit of road subsidies, fertiliser subsidies, rating rebates and special assistance from the: unemployment funds. He reminds them, in short, that the Government, throughout the whole of the crisis period, has never failed to recognise the imperative need for safeguarding the primary producing industries, and that it has courageously risked the loss of urban support by giving effect to the policy it considered was in the best interests of the Dominion.