Part 8

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This transcription is complete

It is the same as if I said to you if you were getting £7 a week and I cut you down to £5, that if you ate less you would get on just as well. If the principle is wrong we ought to alter the principle. Is it right to protect every industry except the primary industries ? - If we say that is right, we need not argue further, but I say it is not right. You protect the labouring man. He says I want 15s. a day for my labour, and the Arbitration Court gives it to him. The farmer comes along and wants protection, and he is told "We are not giving you any." It is wrong.

But Mr. Venn brought out a point that is important. He said that by reducing the tariff on machinery and bags that it is not such a great matter after all, but we would have to get a reduction on every article. If we take it that there are 20,000 farmers on the land in Western Australia, and if we take £100 for each one for food and clothing of his family, that makes it one and a-half to two million pounds spent in food and clothing. And the whole of that charge on the food and clothing is a charge on the town people, that labouring man, and he has to get higher wages in consequence, but it all goes back to back to the man on the land who has to pay it, and it percolates through so many hands. Now we have the Imperial War Council and the whole of Great Britain and France, and their Allies, thinking out some manner of means whereby the empire will be self-contained, and the Allies will have some preferential tariff, and I think, therefore, it is beating against the air to attempt to define a scheme ourselves, and that that matter is almost taken out of our hands. When our Federal people go home they will be able to show what is necessary for us here, and what is best for us.

8911. A remedy would lie in the direction of improving our cultivating methods and doing the best we can in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, until the temperament of Australia alters and our legislation becomes more suitable to our conditions ? - I am very interested in scientific research and education, so that our farmers may be able to do better for themselves out of the land they have done to-day. We know they can do that, especially in Western Australia where we have a lot of new men on the land who have never done farming before. These people are already making marvellous efforts. We have to do our best to help those people to make two ears of corn grow where only one grew before.

I read a book recently by Green on co-operation called The Awakening of England, and also another book by E.J. Russell on the life of Sir Horace Plunkett. He said the English people had the idea that, if possible, we want to increase the yield of the farmer. He said we started on the same lines but had to go back to teaching the farmer to make more money out of the distribution of his present crop, and to buy his articles cheaper on his present crop. Then, when that is done he says the farmer will naturally increase production himself; he begins to learn.

We do not want to lose sight of that to-day. We have too many people in Australia looking after the farmers' interests, and incidentally their own. A farmer came into my office the other day and said he had started farming two years ago. He told me he was putting in 500 acres and a merchant told him he would need two harvesters, and that he had bought two. This man, however, could only use one of the harvesters, and his crop was not good enough to enable him to pay for both. He said that the firm concerned was pushing him to pay for the other machine. I went to see the manager of the firm and he said this was all bosh, and that the man could send the other machine back, as he did not need two. We have men rushing through the country whose one desire is to unload machinery on someone.

I am sure the Commission have seen machinery on farms of 200 and 300 acres which would do for 1,000 acres of crop. It is not the farmer's fault but it is the fault of the systematic form of agencies, and this is ruining our people. The farmer is not a quick-witted man, although many of them are quick-witted. Machinery is offered to the farmer on certain easy terms and he gets caught. If we could standardise machinery and co - operate in the use of machinery, instead of a man having a full set of machinery which he does not require, we should be doing a lot for our people.

8912. There would possibly be great benefit in the standardisation of the main parts ? - Let us take the case of Canada. A reaper and binder has, we will say, 66 parts, and each part is put down and priced on the farmer's bill. It is all added up and the whole of the cost comes to say £50. In Canada each one of these parts has to be supplied to the farmer with 10 per cent. added, so long as the farmer wants these parts. If we could do that here we should be doing away with all the difficulties created by the part business.

We know of firms who will give a farmer a machine to-day and in three years time tell him that they have no more parts for it, and that he will have to buy a new machine. If we had a law in this State to provide for the sale of parts on the system I have mentioned as being in vogue in Canada, it would be great benefit to the farmers. I am told that in Canada a law is in existence whereby no horse, machinery, or tools of trade of the farmer, or working plant, can be sold up for any manner of debt whatever. His tools of trade cannot be taken away from him, but on the other hand the farmer cannot dispose of them himself if there is a lien over them. If he wishes to dispose of them the person holding the lien must have the cheque paid to him and he then gives the balance over his debt to the farmer.

Under this scheme the farmer retains possession of all his tools of trade and no man can seize them from him. In this State there is no law by which a carpenter can lose his tools of trade. The tools of trade of any man cannot be taken from him. We want this Law in this State, but at the same time have no desire to hit up the merchants. A farmer holding 300 acres of land came to see me the other day. He had put in the whole of his certificates to the bank which had seized everything from him, including horses and machinery. This man has an equity of about £1,000 in a farm worth about £2,000, situated at Gnowangerup. The bank will not allow the man to come in under the board, with the result that he has to walk out with nothing.

This kind of thing puts a stop to production, and there will be 3,000 bushels of wheat less in the country as a result of it. If the law of the land prevents persons from seizing the tools of the trade of a farmer, he can, if things go wrong with his own farm, work on his neighbour's farm, or on the share system with somebody else. To-day he cannot retain possession of his tools of trade and they can be taken from him at less than their value. Dealing with the question of keeping down the cost of production, we might turn to the methods being adopted in, say, Denmark and Ireland, and even in Germany, where the people made themselves on the land by methods of co-operation, or at all events helped to make themselves by this method. We believe in co-operation here to such an extent that