The Press Wednesday, December 3, 1930. A Farmers' Meeting.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20101, 3 December 1930, Page 10

The Press Wednesday, December 3, 1930. A Farmers' Meeting.

There are so many ways in which farmers can contribute to the relief of their own difficulties, if they think an", act wisely together, that it is to be hoped they will respond strongly to the announcement, in the advertising columns of The Press to-day, of a mass meeting to be held next Wednesday. Better than any others, or at least with more urgent reason than any others, farmers understand that their difficulties are the Dominion's difficulties. If the country is distressed, it is because the farmers are distressed; and the best way of relieving them is the best way of relieving everybody else. Next week's meeting would be useful if nothing more were attempted and done than to prepare n full and clear statement of the farmer's present position. Every producer can lay on the table facts and figures which show that he is fighting a losing fight and cannot fight much longer without relief. Many, indeed, could show that they have persisted until their capital is gone and they need to be saved, not from loss, but from bankruptcy. Most people know that the farmer is in a tight corner; few realise that it is too tight to be endured much longer, or have faced the fact that, if the fanner drops, there is no chance for anybody else. To tell the country with all the force of plain facts at what a crisis farming has arrived would be more than useful; it is actually essential. But something more than that can be done and should be done. Farmers have a right to say how they can be helped. If they are wise, however, they will consider their demands very carefully. They will, in the first place, not even play with the idea of making themselves a political organisation. Whatever they might gain—and they would probably gain nothing—they would lose their own unity and arouse public distrust; and this is too high a price to pay for any of the promised rewards of direct political action. In the second place fanners should concentrate on seeking relief in its most fundamental forms. They might ask for bounties and bonuses, which would help them at once but would add nothing to the national incomo, while it would actually raise national expenditure. They will do better to ask for what they need most and will help them longest and furthest; that is, to bring costs into economic relation with prices and to reform the present inflexible system which holds them up. Lower public expenditure, lower taxation on an equitable basis, the revision of awards and tariffs that cost more than the country can afford, these are fair and necessary demands, to which others can easily be added. The point is that farmers should take the long view and work for permanent improvement rather than temporary relief, for which they would probably pay dear in the end. There is, however, at least one way in which they can ask and expect to be assisted generously and at once. The Unemployment Board wilJ benefit the unemployed most if it benefits the fanners at the same time. Though the Board has not made a very good ■ beginning, it professes to be ready to take adyice, which farmers should be ready to give. Every district will have to solve a variant of the general problem, to decide what work on the land the unemployed can most usefully do, and the solution will not always be easy; but if Canterbury farmers think about it during the week they ought to be able to formulate some constructive advice to the Board next Wednesday.