The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 1923. RURAL WELL-BEING.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 15312, 13 August 1923, Page 4

The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 1923. RURAL WELL-BEING.

In connection with the parlous condition of agriculture in Great Britain at present some interesting comments are made an an article contributed to the "World's Work" recently by Mr J. W. Robertson Scott, a well-known writer upon rural questions. He draws attention to the different fashion in which the Briton and Dane met that fall in the price of corn, due to cheap production oversea, by which the working classes of Great Britain, Holland and Denmark, the three countries which have no duties on agricultural Produce, have so immensely benefited. The Briton (be writes) tried to balance his accounts by saving labour, as he now once more threatens to do. Because fewer hands are needed to mind cattle than to grow crops, he proceeded to devote areas of ploughed land to grass. On his grass he endeavoured to carry as many cattle and sheep as possible. On his remaining arable land—and because he had a larger farm than the Dane, he had still a good deal of arable left—. he went on steadily growing corn in competition with roughly worked prairie. And ho was quite sure, as he is now, that what he ought to have was Protection. The Dane had not perhaps such good land at his disposal. In any case, he could no longer see any Prospect of making money by corn-growing" against cheap oversea production. He decided to do just the opposite of the Briton. He kept every bit of his ploughed land under the plough. " Further, in order to set more of it, he bgan fto plough up grass and to get rid of his shew. He was minded to market, nit a raw material iike corn, but finished articles. He would make his farm'ug a factory, in which to produce milk for butter and Pigs for bacon. If ho grew corn, it should ne fed at i'rst cost to his stock. He would also grow for his cattle and piys large quantities of roots and green fodder. This provender he would supplement by buying foreign corn, foreign bran and foreign cake ,as much as ever he could scrape together mousy for. And because he" wanted these foreign products at the lowest possible price, he took care that there should be no duties on them at his ports. To-day the problem for the Danish farmer is not at all whether it pays to grow corn for sale at present prices. Such an inquiry seems to him to bo the mark of an out-of-date farming outlook. He is intent, not on selling off his crops, but on feeding them as fast as he can to his stock, and in buying in as much more food as ever he can. Denmark, from being a grain exporter, has become a grain importer. All the grain she can lay her hands en, homo and foreign, she buys, and turns into butter and bacon. These finished products she exports at prices which bring a return she could never have obtained from the raw material. As the Danish farmer was producing more milk, handling more pigs, ho needed more labour. The Dane blankets his cows and often tethers his stock, which have to be moved several times a day, all of which means that more labour is needed. The Briton tried to cut down labour costs; the Dane increased them. Yet it all seems to pay. Mr Robertson Scott refers to the success which has at-

tended co-operative efforts to improve the quality, quantity and marketing of Danish Produce and goes on to mention what has been done in Denmark to assist agricultural effort by education. The State, he says, has spent money liberally in aiding agriculturist effort, but monetary help has been given in a discerning way. There has been no coddling. But any attempt to show why Danish peasants were particularly disposed to avail themselves of and to elaborate the forms of cooperation would be singularly lacking which did not attribute a very large share of the credit to the people's high schools. The high schools vaunt themselves that they teach nothing out of which a living may be made, and that they do not send their pupils at the end of their studies to the towns. These schools concern themselves with history, music, POQtry, foreign countries, art, the lives of great men of all times —and physical exercise. They lift the lives of young men and women of the farms to a higher plane. There are about seventy of these high schools, and the twenty agricultural schools in the country owe their foundation to the spirit they have kindled. A third of the members of the Danish House of Commons, it was found one year, had been high school teachers. There arc some people in England who only talk of technical education for the rural districts, but the Danes have found that the teaching of what Scotch people call 'the humanities' should come first, and that technical agricultural schools are largely the product of the people's high school. The writer quotes Lord Balfour's dictum that "unless we make the work that we do in life interesting we have not got to the root of any social problem." This, he considers, is what so many would-be reformers of the British country-side have fogotten. "They have fogotten to address themselves to the problem of mailing the work of the farmer and labourer and the work of their womankind more interesting. They have been so absorbed in economics and technology. Beyond serious attention to preposterous transport charges and to rating anomalies the State can do very little for the British farmer which he would not be the better for

;:oing for himself." Widely different as are the problems confronting British agriculturists from those with which New Zealand farmers are faced, a solution of the last-mentioned point is essential to both if the happiness and prosperity of the rural community is to be preserved. In New Zealand, as in Britain, "the work of the farmer, the farm labourer and their womenkind must be made more interesting." The cause of the much-deplored drift to the towns is not far to seek; the remedy, unhappily, is not so obvious. Denmark, according to the writer quoted, has been materially assisted to that end by the teaching of the "humanities" first. In this connection it is to bo hoped that when the Farm School at Ruakura is brought into operation due regard will be paid to continuing the general education of the students. In order that boys may be made specially intelligent with regard to science and its relation to agriculture and rural life the prime essential is first to make them generally intelligent. This can only "be effected by well and truly laying the foundations of general culture. It therefore becomes obvious that if at the Ruakura Farm School undue attention is paid to science and chemistry to the exclusion of general education, the beneficial results to be hoped for will be largely reduced, if not nullified altogether.