FARMERS IN POLITICS.

Wairarapa Age, 29 July 1921, Page 4

FARMERS IN POLITICS.

The defeat by 30 votes' to 7 of the proposal that the Farmers' Union should become a political organisation does no more than reflect the feeling of the farmers of the country. We doubt if those who favour this course really amount to one in four. The question has been debated over and over again, and always with the same result. There are Reform farmers and Liberal farmers. There may possibly be a few followers of Mr Holland. Local branches could not hold together for three months if a Parliamentary election intervened, yet all the members have the same business interests and the same need of help from Parliament. It is obviously, therefore, the wiser course that the Union should tabulate its requirements and ask candidates to subscribe to them, rather than put up its own candidates. The Conference was able to amuse itself for half an hour the other day calling, members of Parliament “dumb dogs" and remits “damn nuisances." But if it had members of its own it would be saying these things in anger. In any case, as Mr Hugh Morrison put it, farmers would object to being gagged and driven to the polls and told for whom they were to vote.