"The Hungry 'Eighties"
* In the ‘eighties we repented of our foolishness in sack cloth and ashes. Soup-kitchens appeared in the towns and swaggers on the roads. The slump acted as a very wholesome purge. Farmers were forced to pay attention to management, manuring, and all the other aspects of scientific cultivation. The ‘eighties saw the beginning of agricultural education and heard the first murmurings of irrigation. They called them. the "hungry ‘eighties.’ The eighties, gentlemen, were good-good for the country and good for the land. They taught that farming was a profession requiring a high degree of specialised knowledge. It was the discipline and hard-thinking of the ’eighties which made possible our later prosperity. Unfortunately, the lesson was soon forgotten. The generation that lived through the halycon days between 1900 and 1921-for whose sins we are now paying in more ways than one-took even greater liberties with the land and the capital with which it is worked.-(From "Into New Zealand: The First 100 Years,’ in Microphone Roundtable series, 3YA, May 22.)
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 51, 14 June 1940, Page 10
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171"The Hungry 'Eighties" New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 51, 14 June 1940, Page 10
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