Farmers and Wages

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19980, 4 July 1939, Page 16

Farmers and Wages

! . Sir, —I feel concerned insofar ,as ! your report of my remarks at the ■ farmers' meeting on Friday gives the impression that I considered that it is farm, workers’wages and inefficiency that are raising the farmers’ costs and nibbling into his returns. Nothing was further from my mind 1 . A long association with farm workers, many years of which being within their ranks, convinces me that their interests and convictions are identical with those of the farmer. The point I wished to stress is that when one becomes a producer of goods for sale, he sets up other avenues of employment. Goods have to be transported to the consumer; wool has to go through the stores, be catalogued, weighed and shipped; sheep, cattle and pigs go through the freezing works and shipped; and so it is with all branches of production. All these subsiduary services are paid from the .price secured from the article produced. It is the growing costs of these services that is nibbling into the farmers’ wages. It is brought about by the force of tynionism in

pushing the claims of workers in these services without any consideration to the claims of the workers who produce the goods that make these services possible. It is ■ because these forces can be, and in cases have already been, pushed to the point where the production effort is not worth while continuing, that is instigating these meetings of protest from farmers all over the country. The farmers’ job is best accomplished by individual effort and selfinitiative, but this praiseworthy spirit will get him nowhere in combating ! the collective force which is exploiting his individual effort. Unless these protest meetings have the effect of getting the whole of the producers to- i getiher, so that they can meet collec- ! tive force with equal weight, they will > do no good. They will simply be j jeered at as another squeal from the j farmer. , JOHN C. GRAHAM.