LAND AND THE PEOPLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 531, 26 August 1949, Page 5

LAND AND THE PEOPLE

Sir,-Perhaps you will allow a farmer a little comment on your recent article on this subject. The "drift" complained of began when civilisation Began, and it is likely to continue as long as.civilisation continues to advance. Men earn their livelihood where livelihood is available, and while farming has remained the one source of livelihood in the country, the sources of livelihood in the city have grown and multiplied till they defy computation.’ Civilisation means division of labour, and while every .advance in division of labour creates new work for the town it often takes old work from the farm. Primitive man proate his whole requirements on the and: the modern farmer produces almost nothing, in the finished form, on the land. Even less than two centuries | ago Burhs and his neighbours, with their families, grew their wheat and worked it into bread, reared their sheep and worked the wool into clothing. Now the farmer starts these operations, but the main body of the work is carried. out in the centres of population by workers in a great variety of callings. Similarly, every machine that is invented to aid the farmer diminishes the labour re-

quired on the land, while its manufacture creates additional work ‘to be done in the towns. Even if this "drift," apparently inseparable from progress, could for a time be reversed by making farm life more attractive, how would the change affect the farmer? Increased output would lower the prices of farm produce, while the diminished output of all the farmer buys would raise \its price and the farmer would be doubly impoverished. With city life thus made more attractiv d. farm life made less profitable, would not the "drift" return? Life in the city must be made more healthy and normal. That is the only

true remedy.

J.

JOHNSTONE

(Manurewa).