The Daily News. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21. FIELD v. FACTORY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 244, 21 February 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21. FIELD v. FACTORY.

Much has been said lately about the necessity for agricultural education—steady, determined, practical, scientific teaching of the business on which New Zealand depends. But, as usual, no one seems to think of looking anywhere but to the State to "take hold" to supply schools and courses and to find the means of research. Lord Islington, at an agricultural show the other day said lie wished he were a magician so that he could induce a Carnegie or a McDonald to come to New Zealand to establish a great centre for agriculturalists, and quoted the cases of Canada and Africa, both of which, through private benefices, now have scientific and practical centres for agriculturalists. New Zealand lias no Carnegies, and there is no room for any. Private benefices have in inumerable cases effected wholesale and wellshared expansion, but co-operation without private benefice is infinitely more satisfactory. If by the agricultural organisation which Lord Islington so constantly and ably advocates, New Zealand producers can themselves "establish a great centre for agriculturalists," the country would be splendidly served. The agriculturalists of New Zealand are the most powerful persons in it. In the aggregate they command most of the wealth of the community, and the groups of agriculturalists and producers generally who a'lso have worked in co-opera-tion have been the most successful. The Governor has eulogised the work of New Zealand butter factories, which, although isolated in many cases, have given such a tremendous impetus to New Zealand trade and many of which are models of co-operation and utility to groups of shareholders, and hence to the country generally. But Lord Islington already foresees a greater extension of co-opera-tion under the centralisation plan. Referring to factories, he said: "It was a ! question whether they would not as time : developed be made even more useful and payable by being brought within the | scope of one central organisation." That it is better for the farmer to. depend upon his own common sense, business acumen and co-operation, than to believe ""that political organisation will push agricultural commerce, few will deny. The inauguration of any schemes for greater ' co-operation and centralisation, and wider and more scientific methods of agriculture would depend for success on the rising generation. The farmer who even by haphazard methods has been able to achieve comparative success will agree that by employing advanced methods his son will achieve better results — if his son will go in for fanning. The epmination by science of farm drudgery, closer settlement, greater facilities for social life, a determined raiding policy, the raising of the business of farming to the plane of the learned profession—these things will induce youngsters to prefer rural life to town existence. Lord Islington has been struck with the wonderful fertility of New Zealand and its fine climate. Science and organisation changes arid wastes into productive fields. Science and organisation applied to fertile New Zealand magnifies her productiveness in proportion to their application. We have already a notably large class of folk in New Zealand whoso views are obviously bounded by their office walls, and who do not therefore see that the success of New Zealand ha? been won in the paddocks, that the present prosperity is here because of our agricultural productivity, and that the future depends on the number of people educated in agriculture who can be induced to go on the land. The sentence occurs in the leading columns of a city paper: "This country, it is alleged, is best suited to produce food and raw materials for other countries' factories, but very many thousands of New Zoalanders are anxious to see their country as well contained as possible." That is a variation of the "factory versus fields'' argument. Everybody is aware that the country which uses all its own raw materials is a prosperous country, but a country which concentrates on manufactures and neglects to get the most out of its lands is quarrelling with its best asset. The position at the moment is that New Zealand can sell every ounce of her produce abroad at good prices. If she at present elects to use her own raw material it is because she cannot handle it so expertly or so cheaply as the folk who get the bulk. If New Zealand produced six times the raw material she now sends away, there would still be a yawning market, and it would still pay her best to send it and pay her worst to manufacture. And so the finest policy for New Zealand is to aim at producing as much raw material as she can grow, to make a feature of agricultural education, so that the flow of folk shall be to the field and not to the factory, and to induce the belief that no profession is so worthy of a man as the one in which he uses and brains and brawn t for the production of the onlv real essentials to existence.