What is a Farmer?

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXII, Issue 12796, 30 September 1905, Page 3 (Supplement)

What is a Farmer?

It has been "said, it frequently now is said, and in this district was last publicy said on Monday night, that " the farmer is the backbone of the country." What is a fanner! Etymologically a farmer is one who rents or leases a piece of land from its owner and cultivates it. The original meaning of the word has so far become altered that it now includes a'so freeholders who cultivate their own laud. *Obviouslv the culv satisfactory definition- of

•' farmer " must ignore the questions of ownership. If we wish to get'a definition to cover the man or the class most important to the community ire mu«t fall back «p----on " pfoducer." But then with" the exception of a very few, drones who live upon the colony without adding to its resources, we are all producers together. It may suit a certain class of designing seekers &ft£r place or power to tell those who guide the plough or shear sjieep, directly or by proxy, that they are the c'ass who should be considered before all Others ia the matter of legislation, but sentiments such as these cannot stand the light of common sereq being turnod upon them. The maker, of .a plough is just as important a member of the body politic as is the man who guides the plough. The man who clothes and supplies with shears the man who shears the s>htep is just as much a factor in the production of wool as he. The artisan who builds houses or makes engines or in any way aids to swell the common result of industrial effort helps to grow whwt. to rear sheep, to conduct dairying operations. These conclusions aie old. "trite, absolutely impossible of refutation, yet they aie daily ignored by politicians. It miglit be a good thing if all person* proposing to become caniddates for Parliament were compelled to pass an examination in at least the e'.«mentary principles of political economy. There are several membars of the House who are apparently unaware that all useful occupations are productive efforts. • The oft-sneered-at " middleman," the type of the shopkeeping class, is a case in point. He is as much a producer as the man who puts seed in the ground and subsequently reaps its ircrease, or as the miller who converts it into flour with the aid of the quanrman and the engineer. Edmond About, the celebrated French writer, in one portion of a work on political economy he wrote, undertook to prova that even fiddlers and open, dancers were producers. fie requited but one concessjon. It was that those who work directly at tilling the soil or at other laborious and inartistic occupations require periodic recreation, in the shape of books, music, scenic and stage effects, etc., if they are to be kept "In form" as labourers. As tills concession cannot be avoided, even by the most ascetically inclined, it follows that About was right, and that fiddlers and opera dancers, to the extent to

which th*y provide recreation for dim! toilers, arc themselves ):•! 'incc-r*. We pat forward this point n.-t because we think that there canu-i 1« too many fiddlers and Open dancer?, nor we thinl; ",L:r, production conld not go on without them. Oar aim is rather to induce a thoughtful habit in those who, having boen by circumstances, led into a cateer which lias placed theai in more intimate conm-eiion with the soil than Li the case with i-ther producers, are willing to listen to who, for reasons cot hard to discern. tinier them by telling them that in the end the State depends upon tbeir effort?. Unreasonable view of any community fc thai it must, to be successful, illustrate the theory of the division of labour, and that all who do not shirk, thtir share of the common lot. by thieving or by loafing on their neighbours, are alike producers and are alike entitled to no more and to no less than justice.—(Xapier " Teltg.-iph.")