REGENT RETRENCHMENT AT MOUMAHAKI.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9652, 4 January 1910, Page 6

REGENT RETRENCHMENT AT MOUMAHAKI.

SIR, —With reference to the statemen te which appeared in the Wanganui Chronicle of the 6th nit., Hawera Star of the 33nd ultimo, and several of the other local papers. I regret to have to point out that if the Hon. the Minister for Agriculture is correctly reported he is placing me In a position which the full circumstances of the situation do not justify. When reading the remarks I refer to, 1 considered that it would be indiscreet of me to eontradiot them in the public press until I severed my connection with the Department of Agriculture, However, on the 7th December I sent a wire to the Hon. the Minister nailing his attention to the matter. The Minister replied on .the 20tfa saying “I shall be sorry if any remarks of mine should cause yon to think I reflected on you. I will send yon a copy of Hansard as soon as it is out, and then yon wiii see what I said.” On the 24th I replied to this letter pointing out that as the statements which I had called his attention to had now been published in many of the local papers X desired to take an early opportunity of contradicting them. Now that I am free to refer to them publicly, I am taking this opportunity of doing so. In the first place the Minister Bays:—"The former manager had stated that eleven hands were of no use on the farm.” When I clearly defined to himself the positions of the ten hands left after the retrenchment, I showed him that only one man and myself were left to deal with the agricultural work, and one man in the nursery. I shall here define their positions ;—One stud groom, one man £and two boys attending to poultry, one cow boy and general rouseabout, one shepherd and stockman. One plant breeder, who otherwise attends to grass plots, weeds, efco. One man to attend to the horticultural work, one clerk, and one man to attend to:all the farm work. This in my opinion was an impossible situation at this time of the year, and I said so. Fcrtber, it must have been admitted, otherwise how I requested to reinstate three men.”® Secondly, the Minister says: ‘‘The ;Department wants value for its money, and not to keep a lot of fancy experiments.” loan take no other meaning out of this but that the Department has not been getting value out of me for their money. Is it not rather remarkable that after sixteen years service the Hon. McKenzie is the first to have made this discovery, and that he has only said so after accepting my resignation. The fancy experiments he refers to are nowhere existing on the farm ; if they do exist in the nursery, he should keep in mind that it has only been a few months directly under my control. Thirdly, the Minister says: ‘‘Some of the experiments are finished and there is ino use continuing them.” Here again he is wrcug, there is not one of the agricultural experiments In hand that is at present in a finished state, and it is unfair of him to say so. Fourthly, the Minister says: ‘‘The manager was Informed six months ago i,that the desire of the Government * was in regard to retrenchment, but he took no steps to carry out his instruction to reduce, ” Again this is an unfair statement and not in accordance with the facts of the case. In March last I was asked to give a probable estimate of the allocations for the nest financial year, not a single reference was made as to abandoning any of the work in hand. I replied stating the lowest amounts which I considered adequate to continue the present work. In April I was Informed that the vote was not likely to exceed a certain! sum which amounted to about three-fifths of the ordinary cost of fanning the farm. I have on more than one occasion pointed oat that It was impossible for me to ran the station in its present entirety on the allocation mentioned. Notwithstanding this, the fact stili remains that I have neither had instructions nor authority to depart from the usual coarse of running the station, and in no instance has it been outlined how it was proposed that I was to effect a saving of two-fifths in the cost of its fanning. True on one occasion I got instructions to carry out drastic curtailment in the nursery and to abolish a certain part which previously had bepn discussed. 1 had just arranged to do so when an urgent wire reached me informing me not to make any reduction in the nursery, hot house, or orchard. This wire was confirmed later by a memo. Nothing whatever in my instructions could have led me to think that I was to do other than conduct the station on the usual lines, and my honest endeavour has been to do the best I could for both the Department and the Dominion. Apart from this I tried toeffmt any saving I possibly could without affecting the vlaue of the work, dispensing with two men during the winter, and replacing another at a lower wage, besides keeping other expenses as low as possibly could be done. I neither had the authority nor the power to make the drastic changes which would have effected anything like the saving mentioned, and I look upon it as entirely wrong for the hon. gentleman to say that I should have done so. The Minister makes special reference as to ha ving beard from the press ‘‘that this manager did not think it possible to carry out such reductions as were expected. ” I beg to inform him that up to the present the departmental files express all the opinions I have given on the subject. The Minister refers to the cost of running the station aad the loss to the country by so doing, also that I am justified in resigning if I do not think that it can be, run at a less cost. Here again the Minister is inconsistent. What I have said is that the ‘farm in its present entirety oould not, ia my opinion, be run at a less cost, bnt this is not to say that it could not he turned into a grazing run and be locked after by.one man; however, this would come far short of fulfilling the purpose of an experiment farm. I resigned when I found that it was impossible for me to carry on the work already in' hand, with any expectancy of bringing it to a successful issue, or of conducting the work with credit to the department or satisfaction to myself. Then placed in this hopeless position I took what I considered my only reasonable and honourable course, that was, to ask my superior officer to kindly accept my resignation. When I have done so, I regret very much to have to say that 1 do think it unwarranted of the Hon. the Minister to try to whitewashjthe

situation by trying to put the responsibility upon myself, when the bon. gentleman himself is really the responsible I“*|;-^kNDEBS, Moumahaki Experimental Farm, 31st December, 1909.