Fortunes for Farmers 



Returning to our leaflet, I find several clauses 

 relating to useful reforms, the incidence of rating, 

 reform of railway rates, etc. Those touching on 

 pure beer and foreign meat are, I fear, hopeless, 

 for they would be evaded anyway. Clause 9, 

 which would feed our army on home-reared 

 instead of home-killed (foreign) meat, seems to 

 enter upon the tariff contest. Protection or Free 

 Trade apart (the Union is non-committal — 

 rightly), this question is always cropping up in 

 the guise of Norwegian granite, Belgian rails, 

 Austrian chairs, or American implements. I 

 cannot see how the Union expects our War Office 

 to concur until Free Trade is abolished officially. 



I do most utterly object to the wording of 

 clause 11: "That a bill is urgently needed for 

 the better control of motors on the highway 

 to secure the bodily safety of the public." 



This savours of the ancient and obnoxious 

 prejudice which farmers have too often betrayed 

 against progress, especially locomotive, recalling 

 the bad old days when those in traps tried to 

 drive cyclists off the road. It is high time that such 

 fossil ideas were abandoned; we are in the twen- 

 tieth century, with telephones coming down the 

 road, and airships afloat, and our Union surely 

 is progressive. If not, we are better without it, for 

 a retrograde organization is a positive evil. 



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