THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1907. WHAT AGRICULTURE MEANS TO A STATE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8477, 3 July 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1907. WHAT AGRICULTURE MEANS TO A STATE.

While New Zealand is agitated from end to end by the fear of agriculturists of attacks upon freehold tenures, of interest to note what a reallygreat part the agriculturist plays in the general wealth production. The United States, for instance, is commonly looked upon by Labour leaders as a manufacturing country, the wealth of the State being derived from the labour of the men and women in the countless factories and workshops. Just what a fallacy that is, and at the same time what a country can do that throws its lands open, and welcomes and assists the cultivator, and gives him security of tenure, is shown by the report of the secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture for 1905. This report, dealing with the subject of wealth production by farmers, after giving statistics, goes on to say: "Dreams of wealth production could hardly equal the preceding figures into which various items of the farmers' industry have been translated; and yet the story is not done. When other items, which cannot find place here, are included, it appears.that the wealth-production on farms in 1905 reached the highest amount ever attained by the farmer of this or any other country, a stupendous aggregate of results of brain and muscle and machine, amounting in value to 6,415,000,000. The deduction from wealth produced, made in the report of last year on account of products fed to live stock; is not continued this year, because the duplication of produced wealth in the consumption of products by farm animals is much less than has been assumed, and is undoubtedly more than offset by the amount of wealth produced on farms which cannot be estimated or even ascertained practically by census

enumerators. 'lt might reasonably have been supposed in 1904 that the wealth produced by farmers had reached a value which would not be equalled perhaps for some years to follow, and yet that value was exceeded by the value for this year by 256,000,000 dollars, just as the value for that year exceeded that for 1903 by 242,000,000. The grand aggregate of wealth produced on farms in 1905 exceeds that of 1904 by 4 per cent; it is greater than that of 1903 by 8 per cent.; and transcends the census figures for 1899 by 36 per cent, and this after a lapse of only six years. If there is no relapse from this high position that the farmer now holds as a Jwealth-pro-ducer, three years hence he may look back over the preceding decade and, if he will add the annual figures of his wealth-production, he will find that the farming element, or about 35 per cent, of the population, has produced an amount of wealth within these ten years equal to one-half of the entire national wealth produced by the toil and composed of the surpluses and savings of three centuries."