The Daily News. TUESDAY, MAY 28, 1912. THE NEW EVANGEL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 284, 28 May 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, MAY 28, 1912. THE NEW EVANGEL.

The Hon. Geo. Fowlds is a man who commands respect, not only on account of his sterling honesty of purpose, but because he is a well-read politician who aims at the highest ideals. We shall, ; perhaps, never learn what is known in the vernacular as "the strength" of his severance from the Liberal Party whilst he was holding Ministerial office, but we can rest assured that his relinquishment of his portfolio was dictated by a conscience that is singularly acute, and that it was only because lie could not any longer see eye to eye with his p.olitical chief that lie voluntarily decided to go into, at any rate, temporary .political retirement. Since then, with his customary thoroughness of character, Mr. Fowlds has identified himself with the interests of the United Labor Party. But we are afraid that his new politics are too academic and too idealistic for the average man. He wants the public to run with him before they have learned to walk, and his ambition in this respect curiously overleaps itself when he takes the public platform. Certainly he is in the wrong paradise at the moment, for lamb as he is temperamentally in politics he has lain down- with some very quaint political lions. The United Labor Party is not particularly strong in New Plymouth, possibly because we are not blessed with any very elaborate manufacturing industries, and this perhaps accounts for the fact that Mr. Fowlds addressed only a comparatively small audience on Saturday night. His address was a well-reasoned and a well-balanced one from the point of view of his political temperament, but it might just as well have been delivered in the interests of the Liberal Party as in favor of the new Party which is represented in Parliament by a mere quartette of enthusiasts. Mr. Fowlds admits that the strong Opposition vote at last election was due not so much to a vivid appreciation of the gospel of Mr. Massey and his friends, as to a dislike to Sir Joseph Ward's administration. He did not, except by suggestion, approve of this attitude, and ke hastened to admit that the Liberal Party had done more for the working classes in a few years than the Opposition could ever be hoped to do in as many decades. "The main objective of that vote," he said, "was rather a desire on the part of the Labor people to turn out the Government, which had not been going sufficiently fast to satisfy their ideals. The organisation of the new party was • humanitarian necessity against the other

two, b<?th of which had grown out of touch with the spirit of the age." When this is boiled down to plain English, it means, of course, that Mr. Fowlds is anxious to turn out the powerful Party and replace it by the weaker one, in order that Labor's objective might be made ensier in the attack. But this enthusiastic reformer is evidently between two stnols. He admits that the Liberal Partyhas done a great deal for Labor in the past twenty years, and that the Opposition has done nothing; yet in the interests of the Labor Party he is desirous of seeing the present administration, of ■which he was so long a member, ousted from office. The only alternative to this is naturally the assumption of the reins of office by the Opposition, and the Labor Party at once falls from the clutches of the devil into the grip of the deep sea. The position is wholly and utterly illogical. If the Labor Party has a right to 1 control the country, surely the farmers' party, or the Chinese laundries, or the Journalists' Institute, or the Brotherhood, or the Taranaki Jockey Club has an equal right to demand direct Ministerial representation. If Liberalism does not represent Labor it is,not Liberalism, and if Labor does not represent Liberalism it is not Labor. Mr. Fowlds is an earnest and progressive reformer, but he has leaped before he looked, and he must not be surprised if he finds himself in the parlous condition of the unfortunate man who, having lain down with the dogs, rose up with fleas.

A MODEL FARM. There will be general agreement among Taranaki dairymen with the decision of the conference of. representatives of various dairying companies, held at Stratford on Saturday, at the instance of the Stratford Agricultural and Pastoral Association, to urge upon the Government the establishment of a model dairy farm in a central position in Taranaki. As was pointed out at the conference, the Moumahaki State Farm, useful and successful as it is within it own limitations, is not very helpful to the average Taranaki dairyman. The Government might bring it into line with the forward requirements by obtaining breeds of animals best suited to dairying purposes, and experimenting further in regard to the value of the different manures for producing grass and crops, with a view to showing the farmer how to obtain the maximum quantity of butter-fat per 'acre. Even then, however, farmers would not derive the benefit they should if the farm were more centrally situated. Moumakahi is some distance away, and to visit it entails more time than the average Taranaki dairyman can afford. What is wanted is, as one speaker at the conference suggested, a practical! model dairy farm easily accessible by rail oi 1 road, and no locality, in this respect, is more suitable than Stratford. The fact is being forced upon dairymen that if they are to make any headway in these times of high prices for land, they must neglect no opportunity of improving their methods, their herds, and their pastures. A good deal of improvement has been affected in Taranaki in these respects during the past few years, but that it has not been general is shown : by the fact that whilst the return from some herds during the season now draw- j ing to a close will only average £7 or '£B a head, the return from others will reach somewhere in the vicinity of £2O. If one farmer can obtain this return, it stands to reason that his neighbor, if he followed the same methods, went in for the same profitable breed of cows, and applied himself whole-heartedly to his work, would, in the course of time, achieve the same satisfactory results. Not long ago a Taranaki-ite visited the island of Jersey and looked up a farmer, I who informed the visitor that he was in a fairly large way of dairying business —he had twenty acres of land! "Twenty acres!" exclaimed the Taranaki man; "why, that would be considered a small I paddock in New Zealand!" But the Jersey man showed his surprised visitor that he was able to depasture twentyfour cows on that twenty acres, and obtain a gross return of £25 for each cow. In Jersey the climate is not so genial, nor is the land so naturally suitable for dairying as in most parts of Taranaki, but the farmers there farm their holdings in the true sense of the word, and do not waste a. single blade of grass. It must be obvious to the most casual observer that if scientific dairying was the rule here, and not the exception, as unfortunately is the case now, our dairying output would be at least half as much again as it is at present. A model dairy farm, conducted on up-to-date lines and centrally situated, would soon make its influence felt, and would be worth thousands of pounds annually to the province and the Dominion. We hope that the efforts to interest the Government in the matter will be fruitful, and that the farm will be inaugurated in the near future. If this cannot be done, then the plan that has been tried bo successfully in Victoria might be attempted here—the subsidising of up-to-date and enterprising farmers in different localities to turn their places into model farms and make them and the results of experiments the Government might ask them to undertake available to all and sundry. For taking the initiative in the matter, the Stratford Agricultural and Pastoral Society is deserving of the thank's of the whole community.