FARMERS’ STRUGGLE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20097, 17 November 1939, Page 2

FARMERS’ STRUGGLE

LETTER FROM A WIFE A REVEALING GLIMPSE The following is an extract from a letter written by a farmer’s wife in the North Island to a relative in Wellington. As a reflection of the unrest in the farming industries it speaks for itself:—

“It is strange to be doing nothing to help the war this time. We can't produce more, even. It takes two years to grow a cow, not to mention the grass to feed it on. So that’s not much good. We might make Lhe present number of cows produce more by using more fertiliser than we do normally, but we use as much as is economical, and the Government prefers to give the public works employees a rise of lid an hour rather than subsidise fertilisers to the farmer or in some way bring down the costs it has so wickedly put up. . . . “We had a visit from a lad who worked for us for a few months two years ago. He now has a job on construction work at —(a public works job). He is quite unskilled, 20 years of age, and he is earning £7 a week and his food! He has no dependents, no one but himself on which to spend about £4OO a year, and he works only 40 hours a week and gets all the innumerable odd holidays that farmers seldom realise exist till they find the stores haven’t sent the bread and guess there must be a holiday. “It’s simply scandalous. Here are we, and we are no exception, working never less than an 80-hour week in the summer, rather less in the winter, and if we’re lucky getting away for an annual holiday of a fortnight or so. And what do we earn? So far, all but bare necessities have gone back into the farm. In future we are not going to do any more improvements, because we have quite as much as we can look after now. So we shall be able to put something by, perhaps.”