FARMERS' "DIS"-UNION.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 519, 1 April 1920, Page 2

FARMERS' "DIS"-UNION.

Between the failure to pay annual subscriptions, dissatisfaction with the nominal connexion with a trading company, and the proposal to form a dairying union, the New Zealand Farmers' Union in the Auckland Province appears to be threatened with extinction. Such a finale is greatly to be regretted, for there is much that the farmers could do in regard to the important matters of fixing prices, resisting restrictions on sale and export, and the forming of legislation affecting rural interests generally, if only they were well organised and financial. At any time the farmers may again be obliged to take in hand the work of loading their own produce for transport, and even of hewing the coal necessaiy to keep their dairy factories working, but if they are unorganized they will be largely at the mercy of organized sections of the community. Every class finds efficient organization essential, and if the farmers I t their present union go tt> pieces, they will sooner or later have to do aU the spade work over again and build up a new union. There are undoubted drawbacks, such as the dissatisfaction with the representation on the Provincial Executive, the nominal assoication of the union with a commercial concern---which institutions should be entirely separate in name as well as in fact, being under two separate systems of management and ownership but these obstacles are by no means insuperable, A house divided against itself must fall, and once the farmers start creating different unions for various classes of farming, then the thin end of the wedge of disruption is inserted: a few more blows will drive it hi me. Every labour unionist knows that he must pay up his dues regularly, and considers such as an item ! n the ordinary cost of living and he is quite right. If the farmers fail to act on the maxim that "unity ; is strength." they will do s<> at their economic peril. I.et ihem arise out •>( their lethargy, or compose their differences where such exist, and weld themselves into an organized force that shall become a power in the land: otherwise they will be crushed between the upper miil:tone of wholesale merchant profiteers and the nether one of labour iinionism. To-day is the time to put the house in order tomorrow i| will he too late.