The Club Smoking Room

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 25, 21 December 1907, Page 25

The Club Smoking Room

By

HAVANA

I HAD a long letter the other day,” said the journalist, from a ehap over in Canada. He has been farming out there, and wants to chuck it and come over here, so he has written to ask me about New Zealand. I don’t know a thing about farming myself, except that farmers are always grumbling about something or other. Good seasons and bad, high prices and low prices seem to make not a scrap of difference to the wail of the 'British farmer, so 1 don’t expect any of you fellows to crack up the pastoral and agricultural pursuits of this part of the .world, but perhaps you could give me a hint or two that might be useful. I think this chap must be a genuine farmer in one respect, for his letter is full of grumbling about things in that part of the world. He says the cold in winter is something awful, often from 40 to 60 degrees below zero, and in summer it is most insufferably hot, and the crops can never be depended on, and the frost and the drought play old Harry with your stock, and land has dropped from 18 dollars to 8 dollars an acre, and so on, and so on, like a true British tiller of the soil. And he is sick oi the whole affair, and wants to have a nice little farm under our sunny skies or get a nice fat Government billet. Some chum of his out there has told him that in New Zealand an unsuccessful farmer can always get made an inspector of fruit or stock or poultry or bees, or women’s matinee hats, or other nuisances, and so he feels that if he fails at farming in this enlightened Dominion his future at least is ensured. He. says Canada is a much over-rated country, and if the Government did not practically give the land away, he doubts if anyone would go there.” <®> <S> <S> “ My dear chap,” put in a man from the country,■” there is no earthly reason why he should not do well out here if he understands anything about land at all. Take my own case. 1 had been farming at Home, as you know, and found all my profits eaten up in rent. I got good prices, as things go , and the landlord collared all the profits. 1 could not buy any land worth using because the owners knew too much to sell at anything like a reasonable figure, and in many eases they could not seli at all owing to the ridiculous system of entail. Now, out here, I have been able to buy a good farm on easy terms, I get a good market for my stock, and we enjoy a climate that enables tw to save the enormous expense of winter housing. But I most sincerely hope that we shall keep free from labour agitations. The prosperity of the country makes it hard enough to get help as it is. If you get men to work for you they seem to regard it as a great favour on their part to do anything <at all, and now they have the infernal cheek to threaten us with one of their blessed unions and inspectors poking their nose into everything to see you don’t overwork them. As if any hired man on a farm ever did or ever would overwork himself—union or no union. We arc plagued enough already with inspectors buzzing round our cowsheds and poultry yards and beehives. We don’t want Arthur Rosser and other agitators coming along to pass laws, and regulations against overcrowding and straphanging in the hen roost. ‘As it is, you can’t employ a man to cut down a tree or mend a fence or feed the fowls unless you insure him.” I “Oh, dry up! you old growler,” interjected the cynic. " You say you have done jolly well out of your place. You

couldn’t have afforded that little dinner the other night if you weren’t making a good thing out of it. I should say that you do get a good market. How about the last lot of cattle you sold? You didn’t lose much over them, I bet, or over that bit of “first class land partly cleared and fenced, and mostly ploughable,” which you passed on for a substantial consideration to the guileless and unsuspicious new chum anxious to buy a farm in this prosperous colony. He will have learnt by this time the meaning of “partly” and “mostly” as applied to land for sale. But I suppose like all farmers, you must growl at something, and so you growl at good times because they put up the price of labour. You ought to be glad that the working man has his share of the good things. 1 should say that our friend from Canada ought to do very well out here if he knows anything about farming, and is willing to work. If lie, lias been in the North-west Territory he must be used to roughing it. I have been there myself, and life is no bed of roses. A chap has a most awful time in winter, and the snow cuts him off from all human intercourse and civilisation for months at a time. Talk of our bad roads isolating people; they are nothing to the isolation of being snowed up. I reckon any young fellow with health and strength can do well in New Zealand if lie has got his head screwed on right. ❖ <s> <i> “ I have been studying your country a bit while I have been over here,” remarked a visitor from New South Wales, “and 1 must say that I think you have a lot to be thankful for. You have very few ups and downs, a drought or bush fires are almost unknown, and your smaller people seem to go in a lot for mixed farming, so they are not so dependent on one thing for a living. The small settler North of Auckland struck me as being a very resourceful sort of person, able to turn his hand to most things. I had a long yarn with one old chap I met in the course of my travels. He had built his own house, even to the brick chimney, and he kept two or three cows, a few pigs, some liens and ducks, and he grew a lot of mixed feed, and had a vegetable garden and an orchard. He supplied all his own wants and sold enough butter and eggs and milk to keep the pot boiling. He told me that he had started with nothing, and had always managed to knock out a pretty good living, one way or another. 1 should say that it was far easire for a man to ear tucker” (I believe that is the right phrase) in New Zealand, than any other colony. Life is less of a gamble, but then, on the other hand, you have not the same chance that we have of bringing oft' a gambler’s coup. Things are on a smaller scale altogether. And 1 fancy this certainty of being able to get along somehow, whatever happens, has a tendency to make you people a bit extravagant. You spend your money as it comes because you feel that you can at■ways get more. If the Tasmanians would get rid of some of their absurd fossilised ideas, and burst up their big estates, I believe Tasmania would be as prosperous as you are. Just fancy the idiocy of their keeping thousands and thousands of acres of some of the richest soil in the world locked up against close settlement, and devoted to the grazing of a few sheep. Your Government, you know, has had a good share in making your country prosperous.” *«•»■*> ** The great,’’ said the professor. “ is that we should guard against inflated

land value for farming properties. Wo have at present to compete in an open market for the sale of our produce, and we should not allow rent or its equivalent of interest on capital value to eat too much into our profits. In times of prosperity we are too apt to base our land values on present prices of produce and not make enough allowance for the inevitable lean years. Very few men dream of taking an average for several years as a basis of calculation. But ■at the same time I must admit that we

have enjoyed an unprecedented run of prosperity, and a man might search long and far before he found another country so genial and pleasant to live in.”