PASTORAL LETTER

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5600, 2 April 1943, Page 4

PASTORAL LETTER

FARMERS’ PRESIDENT HITS OUT STRAIGHT TALK TO FARMERS Mr W. A. Rushton, the newly-elec-ted president of the Morrinsville Farmers’ Union, writes to the Morrinsville Star as follows: “As one who has watched the fortunes of the Morrinsville branch pf the New Zealand Farmers’ Union ebb and, flow for the past 30 years, I crave a little space in your journal to address a pastoral letter to my fellow members, especially those 95 per cent who never attend any meetings of the branch. My qualifications to do this are nil, except that I happened to be caught in the tide at the last annual meeting and was swept into the chair. It was recognised that I was totally unfitted for the job, but out of the dozen or so there, I happened to be the only one without a "delicate wife and large family of small children.” It was pitiable to hear them describe how the children clung to them and cried, “Come back, Daddy,” if they attempted to leave home in the evening. At any rate I was elected on the principle that is mostly used in filling vacancies on public bodies, dairy boards, and such like: “He will do,’ they said. Most of us get these jobs because we have never been in gaol, or we have contracted the doubtful habit of paying our debts. Is it any wonder we bungle our jobs ? The retiring president, who has filled the position with credit to himself and satisfaction to those who are aware of the time and thought he has put in, often at great inconvenience to himself, to use a common colloquialism, “was fed up to the back teeth” with the lack of interest of those he sought to serve.

I want to stimulate a bit of interest, hence my letter. If I wanted a text I should cry with St. Paul:— “Awake thou that sleepeth and rise from the dead”; for you are dead and have been for a long time as far as taking an interest in your Union is concerned. In fact, Tutankhamen is quite gay by comparison. You sit in your armchair at home and read or listen to the wireless and learn that the Government has appropriated some of your wool cheque, or else somebody has been fined for paying too much for your pigs. I hear you murmur that’s a matter for the Farmers’ Union, and then you doze off again like so many lotus eaters. I think those mythological gentlemen lost all their faculties just doing nothing. Why not turn over a new leaf ? ? Come along to the meetings and give us your moral support, and it is surprising what might be accomplished even with a “tin-pot” fellow like me in the chair. Bring along your problems; let’s discuss them together. Don’t harp, as some of you do, about what the Farmers’ Union has done; it’s what the other fellow has done that counts. By standing together he owns a Government and controls a nation. It’s all very well to sneer about Trades’ Hall tactics and big stick methods—the facts are we are “too stupid to close the ranks and stand together.” Our salvation is not in the political parties—it’s in ourselves. The time is ripe for compulsory unionism for farmers. If those at the head of the Union are the stumblihg block, let’s shift them and put others in who will express the mind of the rank and file. If your indifference is an indication of your satisfaction, then go down to the wharf and meet Walter and tell him everything in the garden is lovely, taxation mild, farm costs low, the drought a Godsend, and that it will need a good dose of ecxema to keep down inflation. At our next meeting we have on our agenda, “Sharemilkers, their sins of omission and commission?’ Personally, I have always regarded sharemilkers as a luxury line. I’ve never been able to afford one to milk my herd, they are expensive to have around on the 20th of the month, and not desirable when you want to milk your own cows instead of joining the Armed Forces.

But it must be a grand feeling on a cold, dark spring morning to lie in bed and listen to the rain beat on the window-pane, and hear the bobbycalves bellowing, and then to snuggle down beside the missus, and say, “Let the sharemilker do it.” That’s what I call real farming! Sharemilkers to-day are well off compared with the bad old days, when rapacious farmers were wont to exploit their sharemilker by insisting that two or three mqn were kept employed on capital Improvements in addition to maintenance. Then, if the herd averaged over 3001 b of butterfat they were reduced from one-third to one-quarter share on the grounds they were making too much. Then there is the matter of manpower we might discuss. Have we as farmers set our house in order? There are many farmers with plenty of labour and to spare; others where health is being impaired by over-work. Surply there ought to be a better distribution. There are farmers well able to milk their own cows appealing for sharemilkers. By discussing these problems we might help to unravel some of the manpower muddle.

Anyway, come along; my position is the reverse of that of the Good Shepherd. He had only one' away—l have 95 in the wilderness of apathy and indifference. So turn up at future meetings; and if you can’t do anything else move a motion of censure on the chairman.