The Daily News. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1911. TILLERS OF THE SOIL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 69, 12 September 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1911. TILLERS OF THE SOIL.

"The future is for those who till the soil, and not for those who tread the pavement," said the orator who was a tiller of the soil himself. The present is for the man who in tilling the soil uses his brains as well as his brawn. If we believe that New Zealand is on the eve of an infinitely greater expansion in settlement and agriculture than she has yet known we must believe that the minds of the tillers will be concentrated on the production of the greatest possible quantity of produce from the smallest possible area of land. The world has a large number of countries where twenty times the number of people make a living 011 a less area than is contained in New Zealand. Necessity impels the people of these countries—we will instance Japan, Java, Holland, the present farming districts of Prance, Germany, Spain and Italy—to adopt means that seem unnecessary in New Zealand. But the peculiar point is that land in empty New Zealand is often much more highly priced than laiid in the countries mentioned, and therefore the necessity already exists.„for the most scientific cultivation.. Much scorn has been heaped on Government Experimental Farms, and it has e.veli been suggested that they shall disappear.. The value of these farms will be understood in the days that are coming when close settlement cannot be any longer prevented. The Premier, in his Budget speech, showed that such a farm would be established in the south. It will be a success. The southern farmer has always had greater difficulties than the northern farmer, and he will be keen enough to accept any means that may be taken to help him in knowledge. We have been told by an eminent agriculturist (one of the Scottish Commissioners) that the Mouniahaki farm is the finest he has seen in all his travels, and some day it will not be merely the outsiders who recognise the benefit that scientific demonstration and experiment are to the community. The inevitable cutting up of great estates will give the landless a chance to acquire some. We have seen even in Taranaki that it is not necessarily the son of a hundred generations of farmers who is the most successful. The outsider who has nothing to unlearn, and who therefore does not scorn the teacher, frequently leaves the implacable traveller who prefers the groove far in the rear. It seems to us that the fact that State experimental farms do not "pay" as business propositions is nothing to do with it. They are established as schools for farmers, and if farmers don't become pupils so much the worse for them. 1 State effort is not always rewarded as it should be. but the results of State 1 efforts put into experimental farms and the publication of sound fanning instruction will be reflected in the future intensive farming in Xew Zealand.

wages had not in any way lessened the' incomes of the wage payers. II seems to in that tlio production of gold,lias little to do; with the cost to the. New Zealander sf the things he wears and eats. The remissions of taxation on those tilings which politicians pretend constitute a "free breakfast table" have had little to do in mitigation of the burden. Man does not live on sugar, dried fruits and condiments. The prices of edibles that are produced in New Zealand and are not taxed are higher than in most countries in the world, and the most remarkable phase is the extraordinary disparity in the price of goods in various towns in this ' Dominion. The determination of suppliers generally is to be loyal the suppliers, and there seems to be no method of preventing undue profits. If the Royal Commission carefully studies the prices in various New Zealand towns, it will find that there .is a difference so marked as to be alfliost startling. Australia has' become alarmed at the increase in the cost of living, but while Australian wages are in most trades and professions quite as good as New Zealand wages, the cost of necessities is very much smaller, from rent to candles, and from chops to furniture. People perhaps' have to pay for the clever organisation of small traders, who "quite naturally consent to keep prices up. There is rarely any of "cutting" that is a featuro of the trade, of other countries. You may pay half a dozen different prices for the same class of article in various London, Paris or Berlin Streets, and a dozen different prices in a dozen different New Zealand towns all drawing from the same supply and paying the same rates. The price of the ordinary necessities of life does not concern the well-to-do at all. To the poor it simply means that they must work all their lives to clothe and feed themselves. High sounding figures showing the prosperity of a country mean nothing to the man with two pounds a week. His trouble is to exist at present prices without making a slave of himself and his family.