LABOUR’S CRISIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26777, 21 May 1948, Page 6

LABOUR’S CRISIS

Sir, —It is very refreshing to read an accurate account of the good position of this country, and the farmers in ■ particular, from a farmer so well known as George E. Cross, of Greenfield, who, with his sons, are the genuine farmer type. My experience, coupled with information received from farmers in Southland, Otago and Canterbury, admit that the best time the farmer has had in this country has been the last 10 years. A visitor to New Zealand, Rear-admiral C. B. Prickett, giving some impressions of this country in the Daily Times, May 3, says: “There is no doubt about the lack of cohesion between’ the workers and the employers." Who is to blame for this—the National Party’s pamphlet of " Oppose, Oppose, Oppose. 1 ’ They nave continually blocked all legislation brought in by the Labour Government, yet at the last election admitted its good points and promised to improve them. They never miss a chance of propaganda, and it is magnified in our papers. Mr Kidd, National M.P., Waimate, speaking of the electricity position at Timaru, was reported in the Timaru Herald as saying that Mr Semple was doing all that was possible, and if the National Party said otherwise it was only “ window dressin,” and that covers nine-tenths of their objections. In to-day’s Daily Times, May 18, an article by a woman runs true to type, oppose, oppose Labour, and she is interested in the welfare of the British workman (I am pleased), but what did her present husband, when a prominent M.P. of the National Party do for the New Zealand workman when the farmers had record production? The workmen and their children had not enough to eat, ber cause the National Party could not, or would not, distribute it.—l am, etc., Old Farmer. [Slightly abridged.—Ed. O.D.T]