Farmers Only Ones Left With Self-Reliance

Chronicle (Levin), 19 February 1949, Page 5

Farmers Only Ones Left With Self-Reliance

TAURANGA, Feb. 15. "Free enterprise, self-reliance and individual independence are qualities often ntocked today and only in the priinary industries do tliey still lind expression, " said Mr. F. W. Doidge, M.P., for Tauranga, when opening the Katikati Sliow. "For 12 years a steady and ])ersistent efl'ort has. been made tu this countrv tu make people bend the knee to the philosophy of bureaucratie direction and control," he added. "Many sections of the community have puccuiubed to that creed, but one seetion has refused, resolutely and indomitably to aceept it. That section is the farming community. "Had it not been for the implaeable hostility of the man on the land, I believe State domiuation, full and complete, would operate throughout New Zealand today. It is true the farmer has been compelled to surrender a measure of his freedom, but his resistancfi has never wavered. I am convinced that his dogged defence of a way of, Jife in whicli he believes is about to be rewarded. ' ' Growing Realisation" 1 1 The re is a growing realisation in New Zealand that we have been throwing away the substance for the shadow. Fiinple, elementary l'acts are penetrating the minds of those who were led iuto a fool's paradise. In spite of the el'forts of those who" live on the land, production has languished. We have igaorcd the fundamental truth in New Zealand that the land is the source of our wealth and priniarv production is the basis of our wliole economic strueture. On it our standard of iiving di-pends. "For more than a decade we have neglected the ]>rimary industries and soiight. to promote our secondary indusfircs. We have drawn labour from fanns to the e.ities. We have built houies for city dwellers and forgotteti the far m workers. That we shottld ehcuurage suitable secondary industries wliich have a cliance of,success is desirable. The priinary producer will not quarrel with that. "We know that the critieism whieh came from the Lord Mayor of Loiidonj

Sir George Aylwen, was justified. Thfe Lord Mayor only repeated what Mr. F. P. Walsh, of the Federation of Labour, said in a report to . the Governmehl two years ago. - Mr. Walsh condemned vigorously the policy of building up luxUry and uneeonomic industries at the expense of primary industrv. "No one suggests that our secondary industries sliould be abandoned. Our factories employ 150,000 men and employ'ment, but that does not' mean that we sliould go on bolstering up nonesfcential production to the detrimentc of more important enterprises."