The Times. TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 1917 FARMERS AND TRADING.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 285, 19 June 1917, Page 2

The Times.

TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 1917 FARMERS AND TRADING.

PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS. "We nothing extenuate, nor let down aught in malice."

The letter of Mr Joseph Henry, which we print in another column, draws attention to a phase of the activities of the Farmers' Union that is not without its dangers, and one that has not been lost sight of either by the " Times " or other country papers. The picture drawn by Mr Henry of the ultimate results of a close combination of farmers doing business solely with their own cooperative concerns, though alarming, can scarcelv be claimed to be exaggerated.

No one for a moment denies the tight of farmers, or of any other class of the community, trading where and how they will. That, speaking generally, farmers are doing a wise thing by having then own peculiar necessities supplied to them by their own cooperative associations is tolerably certain. The question at issue is whether they are acting with wisdom in trenching upon the province of the draper and the grocer, the saddler and the shoemaker. Whether, in fact, the advantages they promise to their members by a division among them of the profits, if any, will compensate them for the conveniences they will be deprived of when they have succeeded in shutting up all the shops in the villages and smaller towns ? As long ago as May 19th, 1916, in an article on the re-construction of the Fanners' Union Trading Association we voiced the opinion that Mr Henry is now elaborating. On that occasion we wrote :

" If the Association be wise it should, we think, confine its activities to providing the farmer with the requisites necessary to his business only, such as implements, seeds, manure, fencing wire, etc. Groceries, clothing and the thousand and one commodities he uses in common with the rest of the community can still be best supplied by the retail dealers, among whom there is sufficient competition to make it certain he will not be unduly over-charged. Many country storekeepers make no more than a bare living, and a loss of even a percentage of the farmers' custom would crush out of existence members of a class who are not only useful but absolutely indispensable to most country districts."

The address of the President of the Union on which Mr Henry bases his letter was mainly directed to replying to a strongly written article in one of our eontemporaries, showing another effect the success of the farmer in exterminating the retail dealer is likely to have. In the course of the article the writer says :

"A large number of retail storekeepers will be ousted from business , they and their employees and friends will have no love for the farmor on that account : the commercial classes will combine with labour in a gigantic i ffort to put down the farmer politically, and to make good by State means what they have losl by the opposition of the farmers in trade."

Precisely. Aud the effect may be very much more serious than is commonly imagined. Since the war began people generally have, rightly or wrongly, looked upon the farmer as the man who has been steadily gathering in profits in which the rest of the community has not shared. The number of people who believe that the land ought to pay all taxes has enormously increased during the last three years, and recruits have joined from sections of society who formerly scouted the idea. In the ranks of the Union itself single-taxers and land nationalisers appear to be common, paradoxical as it may seem. The farmers themselves are sharply divided on the subject of the direction taxation ought to take and are unable to present a united front to the common enemy. There never was a time when farmers more urgently needed friends and if they blindly persist in turning against themselves the commercial classes they may wake up at no very distant day to find their land indeed still left to them, but its value completely taken away by taxation. And the blow will not be softened to them if they find their own short-sighted policy is to blame for it.