TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3768, 1 June 1926, Page 31

TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY.

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. NAPIER, May 27.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Hawke’s Bay branch of the Farmers’ Union to-day, Mr W. B. Mathieson, actmg Dominion president, said: “We—-a democracy—have been created an aristocracy by certain groups in the towns who have banded together and have set up a court in.which wages and the terms of labour are fixed by arbitration and by law. I believe that state of things to be wrong and unsound, and I also believe that the. time will come when we shall return to the freedom of contract. The groups have grown and are enjoying a guaranteed wage and ;. privileged position. If one citizen is entitled to such things, everyone is- equally entitled to them. Supposing for argument’s sake that our w total exports are valued at £30,000,000, and that we farmers are guaranteed a wage for every hour of work. If the exports do not provide our wages, why should we not be entitled to claim them by law? The city man finishes his work at 5 o'clock and can look around for something to amuse himself, and in his spare time he can organise. I have no feeling of enmity towards the town, but we have grown up with the feeling that he has a better time than the farmer and that he is entitled to it, but he has a guaranteed position and a guaranteed income, so why should we not have the same? Half the men in the towns would live in the country if they could live there as comfortably as they do in the towns. We are something of our own masters, but we never know till the end of the year what our wages are going to be.” In introducing the subject of an agricultural college, Mr Mathieson expressed tho hope that the subject of economics would be part of its curriculum. “In order to seo fair play,” continued Mr Mathieson, “Sir James Wilson devoted himself to the purpose of having a Chair of Agriculture established in one college, so that it might be recognised as one of the learned professions. Auckland went one better and doubled the money raised in the first case, but the Chair of Agriculture consisted of a wooden chair, a table, a few books, an empty room, and one professor. Now the Government has realised that another unit of the University—namely, the unit for agricultural education, has become a vital necessity. It has a tremendously difficult task. If it does what is right It will shut up the two places already established, and bring the two men together in a new place. We are turning out doctors and lawyers In such numbers that there Is no employment for them. It is to be hoped that the Government will established a fifth unit of the University of New Zealand. I don’t know where it will be situated, but one thing I have been doing, nnd that is to try to stop people from begging to have It in any one place. It will be for our farmers, and we shall send them there, wherever it may be. But I hope the time will soon come when farming will be recognised, not as a calling best salted for the stupid member of a family, bnt as one of the most learned of all the professions. 1 *