The Press Tuesday, December 9, 1930. The Farmers' Meeting.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20106, 9 December 1930, Page 10

The Press Tuesday, December 9, 1930. The Farmers' Meeting.

Farmers are so desperately situated today that they ought to need no urging to attend the meeting which has been called for to-morrow in Christehurch. Some of them may feel, however, that thev cannot afford to give up a smg.e day's work in oruer to talk, and tint talk in any case will not save them. Of course it will not; but if they arc to do the best they can to help themselves, and if they are to get the best and speediest help from others, they must agree upon a plan, and they can not do "that without talking. Every farmer has something to contribute, 1 it is only a clear statement of his own plight and a vote to increase the weiglu of the resolutions that may be passcc. Every farmer, therefore, should make it his business to attend. He knows that he is so hard pressed that he must be relieved, or go under; and the sacrifice of a day's labour is not too much to make in order to bring relief a little nearer. The meeting might of course follow more than one useful line; but the most useful is probably that which will lead it straight to the Government, which holds the key to the problem. The farmer is cramped by high costs. Whatever sacrifices he makes to ease the strain, he finds hi 3 movement blocked by the Slate. The State spends too much and demands too much. It exhausts his income and attacks his capital. It raises the cost of the goods and the implements and the machinery he needs, it steals away his labour or makes him pay more for it than it can earn. It heaps on to his shoulders, in the end, the cost of every extravagance and indulgence and uneconomic concession to other interests. The farmer has the right to show how this pressure has injured him and threatens to crush him. and to demand that it be eased. To make out this case with irresistible plainness is probably the task to which, before all others, the meeting should apply itself. But it can do moi-e—for instance, by setting before the Unemployment Board a practical scheme for the use of its funds in supplying agricultural labour. As for what the meeting should avoid, it is perhaps unnecessary to particularise. There is so much that can usefully be done that the meeting will need all its time for that and should be careful to lose none in making impossible demands or advocating dubious remedies.