A FARMER'S VIEW

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14830, 22 November 1913, Page 13

A FARMER'S VIEW

TO THE EDITOK OF ' ; THE PRESS." Sir, —In your issue of Monday last, reporting a meeting in Victoria square, wo have Mr Spiers proposing a resolution, describing such persons as myself, and others who may proceed ot" bo sending their eons or helpers to the strike centres to protect those workers engaged in handling their produce of a previous year's uninternutting toil, and also return the necessaries of lifo for the community at large, as ciplined armed ruffians from thecountry."

I did not wish to obtrudo mysolf into this controversy, but merely say that following on a period of honourable toil amidst the ranks of the workers since '79. 1 find mysolf, with family, members of a hard-working community of Government settlers, and. with the help of ray sons, gathering from the soil a modest subsistence and a.share towards the wealth of the general community. Do Mr Spiers and his colleagues suppose that farmers will sit idly by to see their produce deteriorate, and, in the ease "of many of the less wealthy, rot on the ground, * their . finances become disarranged, and their very livelihood held in suspense, and a devil raised in feelings of mutual distrust and hate which all the oratory of the city squares will not be able to lay ? I have no pereonal feelings towards the gentleman referred to in those lines, having indeed worked alongside him in one of the schemes for social advancement of the community 1 have at times experienced the appalling sense to an industrious man of noed for tho moans of livelihood, and in the hope that fanners and others, in gratitude for what has been, barnr.£ strikes, a providential season, will of their surplus spare a little towards tho relief of.thoso "oasuals" out of work,by the, to my mind, cruelly mistaken "tactics of the 60-called Federation leaders. . , Can any one of these men explain why, after securing a secret political ballot box, they deny the same privilege to the rank and file of their own organisation? ' I enclose a small sum towards the relief of the Lyttelton casuals In. lieu of taking my pjace amongst the ranks of the "undisciplined ruffians," which, owing to age only. I cannot enjoy.—Yours, etc.. "A WAIAU RUFFIAN." fWe have forwarded our . correspondent's cheque as requested.—Ed. ' "The Press."!