Whose is The Credit?

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4432, 6 July 1909, Page 3

Whose is The Credit?

(From New Zealand Worker'.) The farmer man is right enough, ’Tis not for him I frame the curße, But for the sempiternal bluff That this good fellow, hale and bluff, Is holding up the universe That all the corn and all the oil He’s busy tearing from the soil, And that we grind his weary bones To feed the vicious city drones. The tiller well performs his task Who sows the field or tends the vine, But artisans who make the cask, Or mould the bottle or the flask : They also help to make the vine. And in the city by his bench, With chisel, hammer* saw and wrench, The man who builds the stripper true Is something of a farmer, too. The old petition, “ Speed the plough,” Too oft asserts the narrow creed Of canting fools, who won’t allow That as the tool is fashioned now The city worker finds the speed ; And like an old and spavined cow. Would be the famous wooden plough For slowness, if ’twere not for these Despised “ unnatural” industries. The farmer all the bards admire, And sing him monarch of the soil, . But in the foundry, by his fire, The ironworker may aspire To rauk a swarthy king of toil. He beats to shape the grand machine That cuts the furrows deep and clean, And ho will plough, when all is done, Ten acres to the farmer’s one ! The clerk behind the counter may Be helping on the oil and corn ; The smith is helping butter pay, And at the fitter’s bench to-day Some fifty million sheep are shorn. So- hayseed, be not proud, I beg, Nor betd the rogues who pull your leg, For in the arid city street We, too, are growing Mallee wheat.