FARMERS AND POLITICS.

Shannon News, 9 April 1925, Page 2

FARMERS AND POLITICS.

WILL KILL THE UNION. .HON. A. D. McLEOD'S OPINION.. The belief that the intrusion of the Farmers* Union into politics will spell the death-knell of the unitfa was the opinion expressed by the Hon. A. D. McLeod (Minister of Lauds) at Wairoa. . , The Minister said he had been a member of the union for 30 years. Since then the had carried on the balance * parties, being , without equal, but of late there was a tendency to introduce politics, a thing which he much regretted. There wa? 1 nothing so likely to kill the Farmers I Union as that. Every man had a i right to his ow'n opinion, but to make the opinion a party political association would be a fatal mistake, though at the same time there were many questions of a general political nature in which the union might do good work. This was, the Minister said, the age of unions, and he would like them to understand he was not finding fault with industrial unions, but the result of the various unions was the linking up of capital and the linking up of labour, and there was a great danger that the farmer would become the chopping block between the rival parties. The farmers were hard men to get to do anything or to get on with—(laughter)—and if they had a man who could get them to be otherwise he had better take on wings and go out. (laughter).