ARE FARMERS SIMPLE?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 502, 3 November 1928, Page 10

ARE FARMERS SIMPLE?

LABOUR CANDIDATE THINKS SO “FIGURE OF SPEECH” (Special to THE SUN) PUTARURU, Friday. “The farmer is a simple kind of person who believes that if he could get one member into the House he would convince the other 79,” said Mr. A. G. Christopher, Labour candidate for Rotorua, during an address in the Putaruru Hall, Putaruru, last evening. This remark was made when referring to the aims and aspirations of the Country Party. The candidate, whose speech was devoted mainly to a criticism of the Government, said ho had served on the Dunedin City Council, *the Prisons Visiting Committee, and as a justice of the peace.

When question time arrived an elector, who said ho'was an ex-Labour secretary, asked if it was right for the official Labour candidate to ridicule farmers from the public platform. Wordy warfare followed, and the questioner tried to find out whether the candidate’s statement was the official view in which 'the Labour Party regarded the farmer. Order was restored by the chairman, who said that at the last election the farmers’ candidate, Mr. F. Colbeck, had said that “farmers were too green to burn.” In view of that precedent, he thought the remarks made were quite permissible from a Labour candidate as a figure of speech. The candidate was accorded a vote of thanks at the conclusion of his address.