THE FARM HAND’S CASE

Southland Times, Issue 23141, 6 March 1937, Page 18

THE FARM HAND’S CASE

To The Editor

Sir—Would you kindly grant a small space in your paper on behalf of the farm hand. I have read with interest the many letters in your paper about the shortage of farm labour and the high price which has to> be paid for such labour. Now I think that the farmer has had a good innings in your paper so I am going to give them a few things to think over. As readers of your paper are aware the main theme of most of the farmers’ letters has been the Labour Government. Now sir, although I am only a farm hand and am not even slightly interested in politics, I would remind the farmers that every other Government party that we have had m this country has been made up of members of the farming community and what good has it done for them? None. Now if some of these farmers who are moaning about high wages had to go out and work 15 hours a day for the wage they are offering they would be the first to kick. How do they think a man can live on £2 2/6 a week. I don’t know. Take a man who has worked steadily on a farm for 10 years say at the rate of 25/- a week, he has earned the total of about £650 —quite a lot of money when you see it on paper, but how about his expenses? In the last four years he has had to pay his wage tax and levy which comes to about £l5; he has his clothes to buy, which in the case of the average man would for the 10 years cost over £l5O. He has his tobacco to buy which even at the rate of one tin per week would mount up to the sum of £5O. Now that is only for necessaries. After 10 years’ work that man can go away for a holiday with about £4OO. Farmers will say what’s wrong with that? Let them work for 10 years, never go to pictures or dances or for holidays and see how they like it. No, the question of the farm hand being overpaid is utter rot. Farmers need not blame the Labour Party for not being able to get hired help. They have only themselves to blame. If they had paid a decent wage in the first place they would have had no difficulty in getting men. Farmers seem to think that because things are not going well with them, the hired man should bear some of the burden. Why should hs? He has to do just the same amount of work. The cry about shortage is all bumcombe. If the. employer is prepared to pay a decent wage, he will find he can get all the help he needs. If he treats the hand as if he were a man and not a slave and keeps his wife from trying to boss the men about he will be able to keep his man when he gets one.—Yours, etc., FARM HAND. March 3, 1937.