Evening Post. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1938. WAGE-CONSCIOUS FARMERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 38, 15 February 1938, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1938. WAGE-CONSCIOUS FARMERS

Until recent years, it was not the tendency of the fanners, or of any considerable section of fanners, to regard themselves as wage earners. The farmers were among those who sold on changing markets, and who accepted the verdict of the markets, making profit or loss accordingly; profit being the reward of risk-taking. But the arguments used on both sides in last week's debate in Hamilton, between the Minister of Finance and Marketing (Mr. Nash) and the compensated price champion, Mr. J. H. Furniss, imply that the farmer approaches, if he has not already attained, the status of a wages man. In boasting that the Government now shoulders the external market risks, the Minister is reported as saying: If the farmer is to get proper compensation for his work, we ought to say to him: "Centre all your knowledge and skill in producing the commodity, and we will attend to the vagaries of the market overseas." As a synonym for wages, the phrase "compensation for his work" implies a subtle change in farming, the significance of which is not even yet realised. Mr. Furniss, however, helped to make it as realistic as possible. He'is reported as advocating that "dissatisfied farmers should have the right to appeal to the Arbitration Court." As the Arbitration Court has jurisdiction over wages and not over prices, a march from proprietorship to what has been.called "wage slavery" would appear to be, in the opinion of Mr. Furniss, a necessary corollary of changes afoot. As if to emphasise the wage complexion of the farmers' case, Mr. Furniss contended that the fanner was worse paid than the freezing worker. "The wages paid to freezing workers were too great, and out of all proportion to the remuneration allowed for the farmer." From this relative over-payment of the freezing worker he passed to the relative under-payment ,of the farm worker (the farm worker as apart from the farmer himself). Why, he asked, should the lorry-driver, carting the cream from the farm gate, receive £4 18s 6d a week and the dairy farm worker only £3 ss? "Obviously something was wrong Avith the guaranteed price system" when that could happen. The Minister, who evidently went to Hamilton unprepared for such a sally as attacking the guaranteed price through the farm worker's share in it, replied by joining the Farmers' Union as a co-defendant: The representatives of the Farmers' Union met the Minister of Labour and agreed to the fixing of this wages rate. I think it is not enough, but why should the Government be attacked for a wages rate to which Mr. Furniss himself agreed? The blame for fixing the present wage rate is a secondary question. .The primary consideration is that both sides in this debate admitted that room must be found in the guaranteed price for increased payment to farm workers. But when it came to the farmer himself, Mr. Nash made no such admission. He denied that the dairy farmer received less than the £3 5s fixed for the farm workers. At this stage the intervention of a mysterious voice,from beyond gave the debate something of the atmosphere of a Greek tragedy: Mr. Nash: The farmer gets a higher return than those who work for him. Does the average farmer in the Waikato get less than £3 5s a week on a 13.88 d payment? Voice from outside the hall: Look at the cars out here! Mr. Nash: I do not think it is true that the average farmer gets less than £3 ss. He has over the last two years got a better return than he averaged over the preceding eight. At this point there were fairly prolonged interruptions, and on the appeal of Mr. Furniss, Mr. Nash was granted an additional five minutes time. The upshot'of it was that Mr. Nash and Mr. Furniss disagreed as to what the farmer's wage really is; but they are agreed on measuring his position by wage-standards. Why is the farmer, at this particular moment, concerned in.the wage of the farm worker? Mr. Furniss himself supplied the answer. "We arc concerned with the position of the dairy farm worker," he said, "as farming cannot be successfully carried on unless the farmer is able to pay competitive rates of wages to his employees." This seems to mean that, owing to the competition of other more highly paid callings, the dairy farmer will pay his farm worker more than the stipulated £3 ss, which will be a reason for raising the guaranteed price; or, alternatively, the farmer will put his women and children into the milking sheds, against the Government's expressed principles. Here, again, a wage-remedy is suggested. ''Should the women choose lo work in the sheds they should be paid the same remunerative wage as (lie farmer," said Mr. Furniss. Docs this really mean that the feminist ideal, wages

for wives, is to arrive per medium of the milking shed? If so, the Government has hardly touched the fringe of the prices and wages problem, even in the dairying industry. That the "wage-consciousness" manifest among those employers who are dairy farmers—or, at any rate, among those represented by Mr. Furniss —should spread to all employers in New Zealand seems lo be too dreadful to contemplate. Our whole conception of what constitutes an 'employer might have to be altered. There might be little to differentiate an employer from a higher-paid civil servant. But it must not he forgotten that Mr. Furniss, and those who think with him, are placed in that position by the exigencies of the guaranteed price system. To raise the price, they must build up a case for rising costs, and in building up that case with technical argumcnls a technical use must be made of farmers' and farm workers' wages. The moral implications —as, for instance, that a wage-status in employers implies a wage-mentality—have no doubt been overlooked in the desire to provide a technical argument. But the moral implications arc deadening. It is to be hoped they will not spread beyond the limited number of employer-breasts in which they have been implanted, accidentally, by the considerations underlying the guaranteed price. Progress founded upon such selfabnegation would seem to be dear at any price.