The Sun WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 1928 THUMBS UP

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 415, 25 July 1928, Page 8

The Sun WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 1928 THUMBS UP

IT looks as though the organised farmers throughout the country will not attempt to plough a lonely furrow in politics. The political committee of the Dominion conference of the Farmers’ Union has plumped against the establishment of a separate party, and the union’s president emphatically endorses the committee’s decision. The subject was the principal topic of Mr. W. J. Poison’s presidential address at the opening of the union’s annual conference at Wellington yesterday, and it was threshed, winnowed, and sifted with more than ordinary political thoroughness. From a general point of view the president’s speech was exceptionally interesting and significant, because of the popular belief in the country that Mr. Poison himself might prove to be the combatant who would throw the Reform. Government down in the forthcoming election joust. There is wisdom in the solid advice that the farmers, as a powerful organisation, should keep out of the political arena. It is overcrowded now and confused and hampered with more party mediocrity than is good for the country. If the conference should accept the political committee’s advice to avoid a distinctive party label, the traditional policy of freedom will not deprive the union of its privilege to turn thumbs down when the administrative gladiators fail to please agricultural spectators. About this time last year that appeared to be the attitude and mood of the farmers toward the Reform Government, but their political hostility has been tempered with some beneficial legislation and the prospect of something better in the future. It is thumbs up for the Government now and thumbs down for the Socialists.

To most people, of course, the cry of many farmers that the Reform Administration had ceased to be the generous friend of the man on the land was too ludicrous for serious heed. If the present Government has not befriended the farmer throughout its long career, whose friend has it been all that time? Surely not the unemployed in the doss-house queue, or the clamorous crowd seeking left-off clothing, or the business man or industrialist, to say nothing about the professional man, wrestling with the intractable problem of hard times and excessively high taxation.

It is clear now, however, that the advanced political wing of the Farmers’ Union is willing to fly with the Government rather than against it. Flight with the dominant Administration will take the primary industries farther on the journey to prosperity than a flutter in the opposite political direction. Mr. Poison has pointed out that there are too many shades of political opinion within the ranks of the Farmers’ Union to secure a unified separate party, pledged to fight alone until it obtained a firm hold of the Treasury benches. The experience of other countries has not been encouraging, and certainly not encouraging enough to induce the New Zealand farmers to establish a country party in national politics. It is true that in the Commonwealth of Australia the Country Party became strong enough to form a piebald administration with the Nationalists, but so far, in respect of farmers’ interests, the gains have been no more than the pretty gallops of a piebald pony in a noisy cirens. Elsewhere, agrarian governments have either muddled up national politics or provoked revolution and assassination. The plain truth of modern polities is that the time has passed for class government. What is wanted is government for all classes with no special favour for any one class. The primary industries are of the first importance in this country, hut they are not the only important activities. It is about time farmers and other one-eyed organisations recognised the fact that secondary industries are essential and are not parasitical.