LIBERALISM AND CABBAGES

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 4 March 1908, Page 88

LIBERALISM AND CABBAGES

Bx C. C.

Without doubt vegetable culture in New Zealand ie an important and much-neglected industry, bnt until the Prime Minister's polioy speech was delivered in Auckland recently it was not generally suspected that the relationship between Liberalism and cabbage* was a close one. But then there are as many brands of Liberalism as there are creeds in Christendom, and both continue to multiply in a quite bewildering fashion. Sir Joseph Ward is not Rifted with clearness of definition, but he has the shrewdness to recognise that " the path to many great social ideals ie strewn with wreck and failure." To his critics he says, " Show us some path that man can trust, and we, as a Government, ivill go with you hand in hand." Then, with the wreckage of " Rreat social ideale" in his mind's eye, and without waiting to be shown a safe path, he blunders into the wildly speculative proposal to cultivate State market gardens by prison labour. Liberalism, we are told by no less an authority than the late Mr Gladstone, is trust of the people, tempered by prudence. Where is the trust or the prudence in this ill-conceived proposal? As to the former, what possible reason can be brought forward to show that our European gardeners cannot, if they choose, grow all the vegetables the community can consume if, as the Prime Minister says, ''the price at which vegetables are 6old leaves a large margin of profit?" If the Chinese for so many years have co successfully worked their cabbage patches as to secure a monopoly of the trade, is it reasonable to condemn them for their industry and their wise co-operation in allowing no middleman to come between them and their customers? If the doctrine of equal opportunity carries any weight, it cannot for a moment be contended that garden plots in the suburbs of our principal cities have not been, and are not still, as open to Europeans as to the Chinese. To contend that the Asiatic is a better gardener than a Britisher is to oaet a quite unmerited slur on the superior race. The former, after all the outcry against them in the street and on the platform, are a mere handful in the community, and a decreasing one at that. At the census taken in 1901 there were only 2857 Chinese m the country, and this time last year they had decreased to< 2515 males, and, as a matter of course, the whole of these were not engaged in gardening. This decrease of X 0 per cent, will probably be greater in future in consequence of the heavy poll tax and the education test now imposed. Then, it must not be forgotten that the Chinese are not expert market gardeners as the industry is understood in Great Britain and on the Continent. There can be no intense oulture without deep culture, and the Chinaman cannot be induced to do more than scratch the surface of him garden as hi« forefathers have done for countless generations before him. "Victoria has been sarcastically called " the cabbage garden" of Australia, and does a large vegetable export trade to the States east and west of her ; but it is not the Chinese, but the Europeans, that plant the hundreds of acres of cabbages and cauliflowers in the suburbs of Melbourne. It was in a Brighton cabbage patch that Premier Bent made his start in life. Why gardening is not more extensively followed in New Zealand is a query that horticulturists can no doubt answer in a manner entirely satisfactory to themselves, and in all probability the reply would be on much the came lines as that given by farmers who grow a decreasing quantity of oereals notwithstanding an import duty qn wheat and flour imposed by a meddlesome Legislature in their supposed interests. Other branches of rural industry pay bettor, and are consequently followed, without reference to speculative measures ou the Statute Book. Out of the 18,391 acres of land classed by our Dominion statisticians as gardens only 4061 acre 6 are' market gardens, and there is probably not one that is carried on with the skill that is characteristic of market gardeners in the . neighbourhood of all large European cities, where waggons laden with garden stuff pour into markets daily and return with stable manure that is mixed with the soil, which is turned up two spits deep as fast as each orop is removed. Vegetables, to be well grown, - must be quickly grown, and this , degree of perfection can only be attained by deep tillage and liberal "manuring. Anyone who has lived in the vicinity of such gardens could learn, by looking over the hedge, that therein lay the condition of success. The absurdity of expecting to get such essentials in a penal cultivation paddock betrays a want of common knowledge that should certainly be absent from a policy speechEven the marketing of produce from such •places would be an impossibility, because the gathering of crops has to be guided by weather conditions, quite irrespective of disciplinary hours of labour. The vegetables have to be picked and bundled and packed late at night or very early in the morning, and, as everybody knows who has lived in a market town, teams with produce are travelling all the night through, the early comers camping alongside .their loads in streets or market places waiting for daybreak to usher in opportunities for business. Where are the Government officials that would conform to such trade conditions, or that could make prison labour fit in with them? That the time for intense culture has not yet come in New Zealand is demonstrated every day by a glance At any greengrocer's shop window or market gardener's cart on its rounds. The commonest kinds of vegetables are alone to be found there, and then only when the season permits them to be grown with' the least possible attention. The component parts of a salad cannot be purchased 'in any part of New Zealand at anytime, if from the list is eliminated the common varieties of lettuce, beetroot, radish, and onions — the mere groundwork for dishes that tempt the epicure to eat and stimulate the common appetite in a healthy degree. The native-born have never seen a willow basket of mustard and cress on a greengrocer's shop boards in their lives, and endive is as littie known aa a tropical fruit. It Is but a short walk from the Savoy (in the Strand) to Covent Garden, and if Sir Joseph Ward had gone

from the one to the other he •would have found four-wheeled waggons there loaded* high with nothing eke than tiny baskets of saladinge ? to help garnish the tables of metropolitans in the East and West Endsv The supply never fails in any large British city, for when open-air cultivation is out of the question preenhouses meet the demand. In the parish of Oheshunt, Herts, there are 130 aores covered with glass for; the growth of vegetables; and what ie saidF to be a moderate estimate, made seveti years ago, puts the area under glass in England alone at 1200 acres, to say no* thing of the very large extent in the South' of Ireland and the Channel Islands. I» the latter horticulture has increased to an enormous extent for supplying London, Paris, Berlin, and other large centres. In; these temperate localities potatoes grown; under glass are marketed in April *ndf May, and as fast as the tubers are lifted by one set of men others follow at their heels planting out young tomato plants-. That is what intense culture and •killed market gardening mean where the business i? understood. Th© wretched asparagus that* was offered in Dunedin a. few weeks ago was a shocking example of horticultural incompetence, and would have been thrown on the rubbish heap in any part of the world where gardeners knew their business. Can it for on« moment ba imagined that prison labour will be tho means of revolutionising present conditions in the market gardening world? A very salutary change might be brought about by, the establishment of publio markets whera producers and purchasers could be brought face to face, and our agricultural *nd horticultural societies might do much to stimulate the cultivation of culinary vegetables * but in the meantime the publio has everyi reason to be glad that the hard-workingi Mongolian sees a want and supplies it. In connection with the question or wages and) the increased cost of living, the public ia sometimes favoured with a detailed statement of a worker's weekly household 1 expenses, and therein the item for vegetables usually stands at about 4«. That amount spent in vegetable seeds, and planted in baok yards, whioh in the great majority of cases are entirely uncultivated, would grow enough vegetables to keep a very large family well supplied for months, and would lead to economy in the butcher's bill. A' shilling book wouM acquaint the cottage gardener with all the horticultural lore that he need trouble himself about. With these equipments, and a moderate amount of industry, he could laugh at the China* man and ecorn prison-grown cabbages.