STRIKE-BREAKING FARMERS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 3 November 1913, Page 3

STRIKE-BREAKING FARMERS.

, (To the Editor.) Sir, —With tho watersido workers' tho farmer is again to the fore as an interfering outsider. Is it rtc> t high time for the farmer to sit down h.k'l ask himself "Whaffor?" What is the fanner getting out of it p What did he get. put of the slaughtermen's strike, for instance ? Nothing, so far as I can see, but a bad name. Too mean to pay a paltry three-tenths of a penny increase on the killing iate of sheep, the farmers were bluffed into the belief that they would get their stock away if they became strike-breakers during the strike. But they didn't. The Press Association messages made the public believe that the farmers were getting rid of their stock. The recent statement of the Minister for Railways completely disproves the positive assertions of pressmen who were being fooled by the meat companies. Hundreds of farmers know that when a buyer came to draft a line of sheep, lie (Only .took one where in other seasons lie- would have taken three. Then look at the state of the market during all this.±imo. Weekly reports of auctioneering firms show that th» bottom was right out of the fat stock market wherever tho trouble remained unsettled. We know of instances whore farmers lost five _ shillings a head-on sheep while trying to s.ivo three-tenths of a penny for the companies. What did the companies lose? Nothing at all, if their own annual balance-sheets are to be believed. All the companies are paying their usual dividends of eight per cent, and upwards. One, tho Wanganui Meat Company, claims to have had a record season. Others are equally satisfied with the result. As a. matter of fact the companies have -nade so much out of- the farmers that they can pay fat dividends whether they kill for a season or not. There is one matter that is probably unknown to tho farmer, and this is my reason for this letter. Tho slaughtermen's strike was declared off many months ago. But the meat companies have set out to make perpetual war upon the old slaughtermen. The' British notions of chivalry towards the defeated' is an unknowii quantity with them. For instance, after the strike was declared off. and there was an opportunity to get competent lhonto relieve the pressure of stock, several of tho companies continued to fill vacancies with all sorts of hackers and .seratellers. What is mare, they intend to continue this policy throughout the coming season. If,-therefore, the farmers find themselves with two-thirds of their stock, on their hands again this season, they will begin to review their position in the light of expensive and bitter experience. And besides, if anybody, employer or striker, is looking for feud, ho is generally accommodated in tho long run. The slaughterman who sees his working mates harassed and hunted is no exception to the rule.—l am, etc., " M. J. REARDON. Wellington, October 29th, 1913.