FARMERS' UNION TRADING COMPANY.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 287, 26 June 1917, Page 1

FARMERS' UNION TRADING COMPANY.

| To the Editor] Sir, —Referring to a letter from Mr Joseph Henry in your issue of the 19th inst and an Editorial in the same issue, on the Farmers' Union Trading Coy; I cannot see how you can expect farmers to follow the advice given unless some very much stronger reasons are put forward. We are advised to build the country towns so as to make the couatryside prosperous, ignoring the well established fact that the reverse is the natural process, and that a prosperous countryside make a prosperous town. As to taking some of the business away to the city the farmer will always fill his requirements where this can be done most advantageously. Some services can be best rendered in the country town and some in the city, and any artifi cial arrangements calculated to interfere with the natural course of things might be profitable to individuals but only at the expense of the general community. The farmers are advised to confine their co operative trading to seeds, manures, fencing materials, etc , and to leave grocery, clothing, drapery and such like alone. Now, why this distinction? unless it is that we are to handle only those linos which carry only a small margin of profit and leave others to handle the more profitable lines. A most disinterested advice truly. We are advised to leave trading alone altogether or we will incur tlin displeasure of the mercantile community who will league with labour and put us hack where we usei to be. Well, a threat like this might ' have had some effect at some time, but the farmer is too wide awake now. He shrewdly suspects that he will have to work out his own salvation and he feels ouite competent to

do so without having to depend on the favour of any other section. And after all is said and done, Mr Editor, no harm can possibly come to any one through the farmer making himself prosperous. His industry is at the bottom of all the prosperity of tfie Dominion and the results are shared by everyone. I am, etc, A. A. ROSS. Te Eauwhata, 22nd June, 1917.