MR PARR'S LETTER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2767, 8 April 1890, Page 2

MR PARR'S LETTER.

TO the editor. SlU,—l have been reading Mr Parr's letter, it is a pretty letter, it is a beautiful letter, the poetry is first-rate, all the same it is rank fudge and arrant nonsense ; I can compare it to nothing else than a nut with a beautiful shell and a rotten kernel. Mr Parr Wishes the farmers to combine so as to raise tho prices of their produce and compares the farmers means of doing so with the artisans who strike, and so compel their employers to give them higher wages. He says the farmers produce food, which the people cannot do without, and if they would only combine they like the artisans would also get higher wages for their labour in producing this food. Mr Editor, it is lamentable that a man fifty or sixty years of age, more especially one who is educated and a leader, in the solution of great social' and political questions should talk such stuff as this. How could farmers goon the strike. When tho artisons go on the strike it is ii trial of strength between them and their employers, which wholly depends upon the fiuanci'il strength of their trade union, as to whether they or their employers will be the , winners in the contest. Are farmers in 'a position financially to be able to keep back and hold on to their produce, and even supposing they were all wealthy, the ■ circumstances . are so different that it is impossible, they could combine and go on the strike 1 Suppose the farmers would agree to send no more fat cattle to Auckland, they could only hold on to them byallowing the cattle to become lean, and if they were not to send any wheat to Auckland, they could only hold it over for the rats to eat. In the trial ot strength between them and the consumers, it is easy to see that the consumers would be the winners. Mr Parr, in his letter, turns from farmers combining to Henry George, and hopes the farmers will give him a cordial reception on his arrival here, and that by doing so they, the farmers, along with all others, will hasten on the time when poverty will cease and justice reign. I would like to know how a cordial reception to Henry George will help a farmer in a,case such as the following. A neighbour of mine, Mr John Fortune ploughed what he thought about 7 acres of turnips, for which he bought from one seedsman Slbs of turnip seed to sow it with, after coming home with his seed he bogan to think that he >had S acres ploughed and that he was a lib of seed short, so ho bought from another seedsman lib of seed, when he came to sow the seed he did not mix it, he first sowed the Slbs and he finished up with the one lb, which sowed something more or less than an acre. Well what follows, why, this is what happened, the 7 acres which were sown ~' with the one seed was a complete failure and the one acre alongside of it in the same paddock and sown, at about the same time, I think it Was two consecutive days he was in sowing the seed; why it, the one acre, was and is a Mr Editor, I am a merciful man, and against my own conscience as to what is right and wrong,. I withhold. the seller's name of the bad seed, but I would simply ask Mr Parr how a cordial reception to Henry George will make up for the loss my neighbour sustained by a rogue of a seedsman. selling bad seed,. ■Mr Editor, man's regeneration socially, and politically and his well-being-in whole will not come by leaps and bounds, thinkers know and see that everything to be sure is slow, the whole history of the past shows that it is so. It is six hundred years since King John was compelled to sign the Magna Charts, does any thinking man say that our present rights could have been hastened on, and have come sooner, man's regeneration and well-being goes on by evolution. As man is fit to receive, so does he recoive when the time is to come, it does come, man has no say in tho matter, it is ail arranged for us, one hundred years from this we will have progressed, two hundred more so, and so ou till we are perfect, to endeavour at once and suddenly to bring us to perfection would end in pandemonium for it would bo trying to overturn Gods law, that is the law. of evolution.— Jam. etc., HaraitpL