Farmers Friend

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 387, 22 June 1928, Page 13

Farmers Friend

Prime Minister Earns Lively Approbation “TO HANG COATS” _ f Special to TUB SUN) PALMERSTON N., To-day. Although the opponents of the Government make the general assertion that the farming community has lost its faith in the Coates administration, the Prime Minister must have felt gratified last evening when a gathering of nearly 500 men, the great majority of whom were farmers, representing the extensive rural district of Manawatu. rose in a body as he entered the hall and greeted him lustily with "For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Mr. Coates expressed his appreciation of this, and jokingly referred to what he called the very remote possibility of having to relinquish his job. “If I have to give tip my job at your pleasure,” he said, "I will have no regrets in having to go back to the district of which I am proud, and on to the place on which I was born.” Mr. A. Conway, in welcoming Mr. Coates "as one of us, a primary producer,” worked off the old joke about hooks placed in the railway carriage “to hang coats.” The Prime Minister said: "I will see that Mr. Sterling, the new manager, places no more hooks in the cars lest they accomplish their purpose.” Mr. Coates made one of the most powerful speeches of hls career, and in dealing with public questions, treated the subject with more than usual conviction. His thumbnail review of vital national tendencies earned him an ovation at the conclusion.