WHEAT FARMERS’ STRIKE

Taranaki Daily News, 19 December 1930, Page 10

WHEAT FARMERS’ STRIKE

PRKIE BELOW COST. Australia, unfortunately, is admittedly a land of strikes. They have ruined what chance this country may have possessed of riding through the depression on an even keel. But one of the strangest strikes in the history of the Commonwealth, .if not in the world,-occurred this week, in Perth, West Australia. West Australian wheatgro'yera met in Perth at the Week-end and' considered the fact that the Government had not .honoured its promise of a guarantee 1 of 4s a bushel for Wheat. This, speakers declared, was the minimum amount on which wheat could be produced so that the farmers might live in comfort commensurate with the labour involved in kgeping going one of that State’s most essential primary industries.

The outcome of the discussion was a decision to stop wheat production until the Government honoured its promise. Timber workers,, coal miners, butchers, bakers, wharf labourers and seamen—all of whom have held up the wheels of industry at different times in ; the country’s recent history—were astounded that farmers should talk strike. Nevertheless, it is a fact, and so far there has befen no decision by the Government.

The wheat farmers take the attitude that if men in industry,, whose capital ie their labour only, have the right to down tools if the rates of pay and conditions of labour are considered insufficient or inadequate, then farmers, with •millions of pounds invested in their properties and industry, surely have a- right to do likewise, They are not likely to get ranch support from other States, but the ..justice of their claim is making Governmentß think deeply.