HILL COUNTRY FARMING

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22521, 1 October 1938, Page 22

HILL COUNTRY FARMING

. TO TIIK EDITOR Or TBS. PRESS. Sir,—“ Hill Country’s” letter in “The Press” of Friday has certainly not overstated the case for the. sheepfarmers, particularly those on the more purely pastoral areas. The relationship of costs to prices for these men is rapidly becoming a rout, and many pastoral areas are merely being held on to by the help of the stock and station agents with a view to orderly abandonment—unless relief comes within the next, few months. This dan'be quite readily confirmed by any of; these agency firms .referred to, though there are of course quite obvious reasons for tffeir not wishing to do so.

Let me give ah 'actual and true case of ■ what these producers ' are up against. "My neighbour employed a well-built &nd powerful lad of 19 at £2 5s a week (and found) and had patiently taught him all he knew about ’fencing, shearing, crutching, mustering, and so on. This lad suggested that for the'period of the slack season he should take, work which was obtainable in the Public Worars Department on a rock-tunnelling job, fog ..which .purpose he advanced his age to over 21. He informed my neighbour* the rother day that he is-now drawing an average of £2B a fortnight. Naturally this neighbour could hardly on the face of it ipsist on his retutning. as he had promised, but where it, really hurt was that for 84 hours, a seven-day week of slogging, bard toil without efficient help, that man has not secured 28 pence a fortnight for his share-in producing the “public credit” dr . whatever. it. Js .that the public works employees are. paid out of; ■

This-silly cry about social security and unprecedented prosperity may be true,enough as far as that boy is con-: cemed, but with' the hard-boiled.facts! of wool prices and costsfit sounds very: hollow in„the ears of liis former em-1 ployer. Social security for the latter! and for thousands Tike, him is merely; fhe security afforded by the protec-, : tiqn. of the Bankruptcy Court, sur-! rounded as it. is. by. a special heap of legislative enactments for the sole pur-; pose of enabling him to keep dn : keep-, 1 ing on being the miig of the party.H Yours, etc., ;

■ CARPET GRASS. September 30, 1938.