Premier Comments on Fanners’ Resolution

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 4, 5 January 1940, Page 8

Premier Comments on Fanners’ Resolution

SAILORS’ RISKS Producers Given a Fixed Price (Ey Telegraph—Press Association) WELLINGTON, Jan. 4. In an interview’, Mr Savage commented on the resolution reported to have been carried at a meeting of farmers convened by the New Zealand Farmers’ Union in the Auckland province. He said that, according to the copy forwarded to him, the meeting suggested to the farming community in the province that a policy of economic non-co-operation be adopted "as a protest against tho policy that is preventing them from increasing production as required lay the Imperial Government.” It was also recommended that this attitude be implemented by the farmers’ limiting their purchases to bare necessaries, by dispensing with non-essential transport, and by staying upon their farms and making them nearly as possible self-sufficient units for the support of the farmers and their families, such policy to remain in force "until tho Government removed the handicaps now preventing us from carrying out our undertaking to the Imperial Government.” Mr Savage said that those who complained about not receiving sufficient for their produce should look at the risks taken by other people. He mentioned the Navy and the Merchant Service, and said: "If you can find anything more disloyal and with a greater subversive tendency than this resolution, I w’ould like to hear it.” Sailors, he said, were not asking for another 1/- an hour for the risks they took. The producers ■were given a fixed price, and the whole of their produce had to be conveyed by the Navy at no cost to the shipper, and in the event of any of New Zealand’s produce being sent to the bottom the farmer would still be paid the full price for what he produced. Bible-Class Resolutions. Mr Savage also referred to resolutions passed by the Methodist Bible Class conference, one to the effect that men should not enlist, and the other opposing the introduction of conscription. “In plain English,” said Mr Savage, “the conference suggested that no action in respect of the war should be taken at all. The war was being fought to determine whether the British Empire should have a life w'orth living or become part and parcel of Germany, with no right to govern it—a selfish attitude that would not stand investigation five minutes.”