The Press Thursday, December 11, 1930. Relief for Farmers.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20108, 11 December 1930, Page 10

The Press Thursday, December 11, 1930. Relief for Farmers.

The very largely attended meeting in Christchurch yesterday afternoon should help to convince the community and the Government that farmers are not crying out because they are hurt but t because they are on the edge of disaster; and a disaster to primary production means national calamity. Though the Government has done singularly "little to show that it appreciates the fact, the situation of the country i not one in which the question is arguable, whether the farmer needs help and should be helped. The farmer must be helped, speedily, substantially, and in the most essential ways. If help is impossible without sacrifice — I and no one pretends anything else—that is not a reason for delaying or refusing the help, or for reducing it to ineffectiveness by gingerly and delicate handling of the problem, but .. reason for tackling the job with all the firmness and wisdom demanded by a national effort in the national interest. What best helps primary production is in the long run to the advantage of every worker and employer. Advantages tenaciously held at the expense of over-burdened primary production are temporary and false, exhausting the sole resource from which real advantage can flow to any section of the people. It is high time, therefore, to reorganise the national economy—to '' make fanning pay," in Mr L. R. C. Macfarlane's words, and "make New " Zealand pay." It does not matter if the obstruction is a fetish like the Arbitration Act, or a piece of reckless folly like the payment of award rates on relief work 3, or the mischievous principle of taxing land, whether the use of it is profitable or not, or the piling up of taxation to support the dead weight of unproductive expenditure of every kind. All these and other obstructions must give way and be brought down, and no special interest of any sort should be allowed to preserve them. Although the farmers know that their attack on these causes of their difficulties is widely supported, they were wise to seek active co-opera-tion, as they did by arranging for a committee, representing the Agricultural and Pastoral Associations, the Farmers' Union, and the Sheepowners* Union, to work with the Chamber of Commerce and the Manufacturers' Association. Whether or not the Government is induced to call either a special session <*f Parliament or the round-table conference that has been advocated, it will be useful for industry and commerce to draw as close as possible and unify their ideas. But the committee can do a good deal independently. For example, if it is not intended to assume the functions of the Farmers' Relief Boards proposed by Mr Macfarlane, it can at least examine the proposal and give it practical shape. There is work for such voluntary boards to do, in helping farmers to get the best out of their land and indeed in helping them to stay on it. There, actually, is the problem in a particular and urgent form, not yet generally understood. It has to be made possible for many farmers to stay' on their farms and continue producing. The minimum inducement that the country can offer them is that they should be enabled to go on working without inevitably making a loss; and yet in many cases eveh that inducement is wanting. It must be supplied, and soon.