LABOUR FOR FARMS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 246, 14 September 1940, Page 6

LABOUR FOR FARMS.

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Kindly allow me space to draw the public’s attention to the extent of the co-operation being offered the farmer. Our Prime Minister pleaded for co-operation, but Government officials are not always able through the regulations to help in this respect. Would it not have been better if Mr Webb, or Mr Fraser, bad first taken a glimpse of the farmer from early morning till late-at night, tired and aching, doing two men’s work whilst sustenance men do nothing We 'have men on city council work being paid full wages from the Government and the councils paying only 2s per week towards bicvclc upkeep. Could you please explain, Mr Editor, whether the men around the town chippiug weeds are doing more for their country than those working on farms ? Evidently Mr Webb thinks they are; because he pays them full award wages and they are fully experienced pick and shovel"men. Now, sir, the Government’s new 4F Scheme for farm labour is a farce. I say so because I 'have tried it out. Having employed one man. tinder this scheme and engaged another after ho left I have had a hitter taste left towards our local Social Security Placement Office and its officers. Last week I found a man who had five children a healthy young man. keen to work, who had been placed on sustenance at 34 vears of age. My wife, recently out of hospital, had been assisting me with the milking, leaving her young baht and other young Children to take care of themselves. You can imagine what a relief it was to at last get a man who was willing to learn and put his

shoulder towards increasing production. According to Mr Fraser’s recent broadcast, such men as these are to he subsidised. I informed the Social Security Placement Office that I had secured a married man who had been on sustenance and was willing to provide him with milk and wood and pay my share and get the Government subsidy, hut was politely informed that seeing this man had kept a house cow when he used to chip weeds in town he was classed as experienced and the subsidy would not bo available. Now. sir, are the farmers to put up with this sort of thing much longer? AA'o pay taxes to keep men on sustenance whilst the Government and its officials refuse to release these men for genuine productive work. I say the system is wrong. Our Socialistic ritual' has got to stop. I. am' only a poor, honest, hard-working farmer and believe in. everybody being treated fairly, but why does the Government refuse persistently to listen not only to farmers, but to all the sensible, farseeing business men we have in the’country? If the 4F Scheme is to he a success it must include all men taken off public works and sustenance as most of them are “rusting” for lack of work.—l am. etc.,

~ , BRITISH TO THE CORE Palmerston North, 14/9/40.