THE FARMER’S REWARD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23830, 9 June 1939, Page 15

THE FARMER’S REWARD

TO THE EDITOR Sir, —In to-day’s issue appears a statement by Mr Adam Hamilton, when addressing a Farmers’ Union conference in Dunedin, “that in his opinion up to 1930 the farmer got a just and reasonable reward for his labours and a fair deal from the country.” Is this the same Mr Adam Hamilton, who. speaking in Parliament on June 29. 1927, said: “Farmers’ sons are leaving the farms to-day and are going into the towns looking for jobs. It is not a case of inexperienced men going out to the farms and making a failure of farming. Farmers’ sons will not stop on the land to-day and you cannot blame them. The farmers themselves say that they cannot ask them to stay because they know that in the race to-day the farmers are quite out of court when it comes to the division of the national income at the end of the year. The fanners’ sons, then, are leaving the land and we cannot blame them under present conditions.” These two statements from the same man are directly opposite as to the farmers’ position in 1927. We will leave the rest to the farmers to decide their value. —I am, etc., J. G. Barclay. Wellington, June 7.