IN DAYS OF DEPRESSION

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXI, Issue 2778, 21 November 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

IN DAYS OF DEPRESSION

DISTANT FIELDS MAY SEEM GREENER.

There is such a thing as a " state of mind " aggravating and exaggerating real troubles to a point where mental depression is a real hindrance to recuperation.

Farmers in particular are warned against over-indulgence in what is sometimes called self-pity. It is a bad disease. Do not give way to it if you can possibly avoid it. Farmers generally have no means of knowing the depressed condition of manufacturing industries. They have no way of knowing how hard business men in great centres of population have been hit. The farmer who fancies that he has the greater burden is therefore labouring under a delusion. If farmers knew the load that thousands of business men and hundreds of commercial concerns aue carrying to-day it might help them to realise that the farmer is not the only sufferer.

You often hear farmers say, " I don't want my boys to. have anything to do with farming. They can fit themselves for any other business they like." And so we see farmers' sons being educated to be, engineers' and everything but farmers. ' How many engineers are making a living to-day? How many are out of jobs? Plenty, we should say. Their business is in no better shape just now than is the farmer's, but just because farming is temporarily in distress a lot of folk talk about its never coming back; talk as if any other liiafe of work is sure to give better returns for the future. Is this reasonable? Is it logical? ' Or is it just the reaction of minds depressed by recent losses?.