FARMER AND. MIDDLEMAN.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 December 1919, Page 4

FARMER AND. MIDDLEMAN.

A £2,000 BULL STORY. (By W. Beacli Thomas.) A most human story, touching the centre of the moment, indeed of all ages, was told me by a young farmer as we watched his man grooming a £2,000 bull. We had been talking of farmers and middlemen’s profits, and the story was his summing up. His father and a friend, both young and as high in hope as they were low in funds, left Glasgow for the south. One selected the country, the other the town.

After some short period of struggle the farmer had secured' a few milch cows and arranged to send their produce for distribution to the friend in London, who bought a handbarrow and started a round.

The scheme lasted for over twenty years, when the London milkman, who had made larger and larger profits, sold his business for £35,000, which was only a part of the fortune he had amassed. The farmer was still a poor man. Only by grit and character and wisdom had be weathered the long storm that wrecked half the farmers in England between 1880 and 1890.,When he looked on his struggle and murmured “Foreward though I canna’ see, I guess and fear.” he may with good excuse have thought hard things of the middleman friend who had grown wealthy, largely on the stuff he had produced with the sweat of his brow.

So far in the story the middleman has it. He worked less hard and 'made money without risking much more cash than the price of his barrow and mugs. Who would be a farmer who could be a middleman, a milk seller, or butcher or baker • * # * * But the story has a sequel: “Say not the struggle naught availeth.”

The farmer came through the hard times, and slowly increased his holding and his flocks and herds. His character grew strong with his fortunes; and his health witn both. He enjoys to-day a green old age; and has left his many acres to the capable control of a bevy of sons who have returned from the war full of vigour and oh ideas and strong confidence that the future is theirs. They mean to produce and make production pay. They actively rejoice that the wages of their men are high and that high farming is forced on them by the new social conditions. They have the newest machines. They have built silos and grow lucerne and maize to fill them with. They are about to grow even linseed oil'for their own cake. They have the control of sufficient capital and: good enough land. They can buy £2,000 bulls.

Their father budded even better than ho know. What of the who mndo the easy fortune? Hb died long ago, and where the fortune is, who shall trace? It was never expressed in great solid satisfying stacks, in browsing cattle, in carts that can carry and horses that can pull as many tons as you please. It was never expressed in strengthening sinew and the clear eye and keen character of those who wrestle with nature. It served neither the man nor his nation. Quite certainly, on balance, the farmer had the better fate, the middleman the worse.