FARM LABOUR SHORTAGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23353, 19 November 1937, Page 13

FARM LABOUR SHORTAGE

ro THE EDITOR

Sir,—l notice that in nearly every paper one sees there is some complaint about shortage of farm labour. Well, whose fault is that? The farmers either send their sons off the place or else let them drift away to a better job I know of many farmers sons who get into good jobs, as, for instance, in dairy factories, coal runes. Public Works, railway workshops, etc Is the farmer supposed to let his sons away when he is so seriously short of men? He sends his boys to high school and they are afterwards fit for neither use nor ornament as far as farm work is concerned. At first, the man who accepts work on a farm is a bit of an idol, but after a few weeks he becomes only a secondary consideration, and often a last consideration. about the place. The farmer boss, or his manager who looks after the farm, has more freedom, more feeds, and more leisure, and is looked after better generally than the man working under him. When we come to the money part of the argument, we find that the men on public works or other jobs get as much for two days and a-half or three days work as the man on the farm receives for a whole week of seven days. Then the hours of the men on farms amount to as much in two days and a-half to three days as those of the men on the public works do in a week What man can be blamed foi leaving a farm if he sees a way to better himself. Is the Labour Government going tq force men on to farms against their will, even if the work is not suitable for them or they for the work? The man may be a labourer most ot his time, but if he is out of work and registers at the Government Labour Bureau he is immediately supplied with a farm job whether he likes it or not. ]ust because his last little job happened to be on a farm He was probably there only until something more to his liking turned up. If the farmers want men let them keep their own sons at home for a change, and let them treat their men as well as they treat their sons and themselves. And, lastly, let them pay good wages and keep a good table and see that the men have what the other men on the place get in the way of comfort, etc.; then, in a few years, the farmers will have no cause to complain.—l am. etc.; City Lover.