ON THE LAND

Southland Times, Issue 20201, 11 June 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

ON THE LAND

THE WOMAN’S PROBLEM

(By a

a Farmer’s Wife.)

Nine years ago, thinking our 200-acre farm of second-class land too small for a family, we acquired for the first mortgage our present holding of 320 acres of similar quality. Having been sold about three years before for £l4 an acre, it was considered a bargain at £l2 10/-, and making a cash sale of our first holding to the Government at a similar price on the returned soldier system, we settled down to work under a moderate mortgage of £6 5/-, later increased to £6 11/- an acre. This was certainly not a very heavy load (at least in comparison with some), and though the land was far too much out of order for the first few years to carry the number of sheep required, still we kept hoping for better times soon. Our hopes have not been realised. By the time the land was ready for the sheep the money stringency had unexpectedly become so great that the company could not put the stock on the land without cash payment, while not long before, to add to our mortification, my husband had refused a cash offer of his first price back for his four-year-old Buick car, exactly what was needed to put the place on a paying basis. This he did not know at the time, and after motoring for twenty years, he did not care about parting with the car. After this, the place had no sheep for a year. The few there were had been sold to pay the interest. Then only 200 old ones were procured, which were all the company could supply. From them my husband bred the 200 ewes he has at present, all the rest of the lambs, including ewes, having to be sold to pay interest and company’s expenses, ( so that for at least six

years the place has been understocked, a most serious drawback.

In addition, the other returns, from grass seed chiefly, have not been great, as my husband has not been able to pay for labour; and those around us who seem to be doing the best lately have mainly done so by making cheap labour of their boys in their ’teens, instead of sending them to school, which style of management will pay neither parents nor sons in the long run. Besides these drawbacks, soaring expenses are an ever-increasing trouble. Tne cost of production on a farm has gone up by 300 per cent., while prices, which had increased but 100 per cent., arc now going dismally down. Interest has also mounted, and rates are heavy, while Power Board rates and charges have become an additional uurden and motoring expenses have been the worst drain of all till the car was sold two years ago. On top of these came nearly £lOO hospital expenses through my husband’s illness for neany a year, and then the loss of our house by fire a year

ago with but little insurance on it. AU the while, the company’s assistance in carrying on the farm has become ever more stringent, and even though there is certainly a great scarcity of money generally, yet our company seems to be in that respect the worst of them all, some of our neighbours, more liberally accommodated by other firms, making greater headway.

Meantime, while things have gone from bad to' worse, the four boys have been going through the classes at the primary school, and the eldest is now nearing the top. Eighteen months more will see him through, with the three others coming close on, and it gives me much concern to see them in danger of losing their education at the higher schools, as seems to be the order of the day in this part of the country. Education, and rightly so, is everywhere the order of the day. It makes for efficiency, by which alone, and not by force 1 of arms, will our Empire hold its place in the sun. I know its worth myself, belonging, as I do, to a well-educated family and looking round, I see those who are doing best these days are all educated. Every walk in life worth entering at all requires a good general education first, upon which to base the special training that follows. I Moreover, not only in the matter of a | vocation, but also in the social side of life is an education of immeasurable importance. Young people must learn to put, not merely their working, but their recreative, hours to the very best advantage, both to gain the greatest enjoyment, and to advance their material interests as well. Not only this, but the best education is the one that is got at the best time. Nothing equals the results gained from a good school during the most impressionable age of youth, from twelve to eighteen years. Adult education never seems entirely to make up for it. Youth is the natural time for learning, which time, once gone, never returns.

Amongst the farming community of New Zealand, the education of youth has certainly been too much taken up by labour suited only to a later age, and a well proved economic law has been exemplified which says that the rate of payment for labour of any kind is fixed by the standard of life, which, in its turn, is fixed by the standard of education. From which we see that a good education (together with health) is the fundamental requirement of a good, income. In New Zealand, however, robbed of their school days, the farmers’ standard of life, save in the matter of cars, has often been too low (and often lower still through car expenses). For this reason, at least in part, they have often been induced to pay unthinkable prices for land, through which they could have no assurance of anything but a poor return. In rebellion against this prospect, many young graziers, who are as a rule of a higher standard of education, have left New Zealand, and gone to more promising countries, where land is cheaper and of better quality, there to win for themselves something better than “all work and no play,” with little pay besides, | where, for example, Judge Ostler, of | Napier, buys 10,000 acres of the best land | for the paltry sum of £1275 (just enough ! for a good house here), where the hours on the land are not from daylight till dark, and often longer, and where the busy housewife does not get weeks, and sometimes months, behind, as I do, in reading her papers and books.

Not only in the matter of acquiring land, but also in farming it, do we see the good of well-trained brains. The Danes are the best, and the most scientific farmers in the world. They can make returns out of second-class land, such as New Zealand farmers could never do, and most Danish farmers are well-to-do, even though there is very little first-class land in Denmark. Even in New Zealand we have some cases where science and art combined are making their mark, more especially on firstclass land, where one man on a dairy farm of only 170 acres employs three men regularly, while others can’t employ to make it pay, and does well out of it, having built a £l2OO house out of his returns from bees alone, which are merely a side line. This man had a good general education to begin with, being a school teacher before he took up farming. On some second-class land, as well as on runs where scientific methods are used, good results are being obtained. But, taking the farmers of New Zealand on the whole, I am afraid there is some ground for the accusation that they are inefficient, and they were no doubt de-

servedly slighted, when a member of the Wanganui Chamber of Commerce proposed, a few months ago, that Danish farmers should be brought in to work a certain public estate in that district. This inefficiency in farming, as in anything else, can lead only to a blind alley, and the thought of such as that in store for the boys is to me most repugnant. On this account, and, moreover, since the Government is offering us but a small loan with which to replace the house, I am diligently persuading my husband that something better is needed for our family’s requirements. Here he can make but little, and I nothing at all, though working long hours, often from five a.m. till nine p.m., in winter as well as in summer. It reminds me of the old gunner out of the navy, who, a few years ago, after indulging in a glass or two in the township, stopped in the street and began to open out his mind to a friend and I while we waited for the car to go home. "Do you know what I think of this cockyin’?” he asked. “It’s slavery,” he declared, with his fist coming down through the air for emphasis. “I’m going back to the guns,” he said, “and I’ll stop at the guns till I die.” Thusresolved, he went his way. True, in these days of many wants, and straitened incomes, no one can afford to “slave,” like the gunner, for nothing. All must do the best and the most they can, wasting neither time nor talent. And for

: me to be doing housework worth only 30/a week, when I should be making much i more, is certainly wasting both—no good to either the boys or me, and merely increasing my husband’s load. - Not only must these things be considered, but also my own independence, a matter of equal importance, as every woman realises who prefers to support herself. As , my lady friend in a prosperous business of her ow-n in the township said as she held ' her head aloft, and tossed her golden j shingles in the air, “Yom own is the best. ! There is nothing like being independent,” while Jock in standard six, just out of school with the gramophone tune still ringing in his ears, came in singing, suitably to the occasion— Girlies, have your freedom, And, by the way, Don’t wear things, If you don’t think you need ’em. Besides, being naturally and by education of a professional turn of mind, I long for my favourite occupations, reading and writing, to which I gravitate, as by a natural law, in every spare moment. These moments being few and far between on the farm, I am always pleased when I hear my husband say that in many places he could make much more than hefe. and delighting to think that my days on the land are numbered, I say in the style of the gunner, “I’m going back to the books, and I’ll stop at the boolu till I die.’*’